tihvary  of  Che  ^theological  ^^mimvy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PURCHASED  BY  THE 
HAMILL  MISSIONARY  FUND 

BL   1515    .M65 

Mills,  Lawrence 

Our  own  religion  in  ancient 

Persia 


OUR  OWN  RELIGION  IN  ANCIENT 

PERSIA 


NOV    1   1913 


OUR  OWN  RELIGI 
IN  ANCIENT   PERSIA 

BEING  LECTURES  DELIVERED  IN  OXFORD 
PRESENTING  THE  ZEND  AVESTA  AS 
COLLATED  WITH  THE  PRE-CHRISTIAN 
EXILIC  PHARISAISM,  ADVANCING  THE 
PERSIAN  QUESTION  TO  THE  FOREMOST 
POSITION     IN     OUR    BIBLICAL     RESEARCH 


BY 

Dr.   LAWRENCE  "mills 

PROFESSOR    OF    ZEND    (aVESTa)    PHILOLOGY    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    OXFORD 

TRANSLATOR    OF    THE     XXXl^^'    VOL.     OF    "tHE    SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST  " 

EDITOR    OF    THE    PAHLAVI    TEXTS    OF    YASNA     I,    5-25,    5+-?  I    WITH 

COLLATION    OF    ALL    MSS.    IN    Z.D.M.G.    TRANSLATED    IN    J.R.A.S. 

AUTHOR    OF    "the    FIVE    ZARATHUSHTRIAN    GATHAS  " 

OF    A    SECOND    EDITION    OF    THE    SAME    IN    ENGLISH    VERBATIM    AND    FREE     METRICAL 

AUTHOR    OF    "ZARATHUSHTRA    PHILO    THE    ACH^MENIDS    AND    ISRAEL  " 

OF    "the     ESCHATOLOGY    of    THE    AVESTA    COMPARED    WITH    DANIEL    AND    RPVELATIONS  " 

OF    "  YASNA    I.     WITH    THE    AVESTA    PAHLAVI    PERSIAN    AND    SANSKRIT    TEXTS 

AND    WITH    THE    AUTHOr's    SANSKRIT    EQUIVALENT" 

OF     "the    SANSKRIT    EQUIVALENT    OF    YASNA    XXVIII    XXIX    XLIV    (z.D.M.G.)" 

OF    "a    DICTIONARY    OF    THE    GATHIC    LANGUAGE    OF    THE    ZEND    AVESTA  " 

BEING    VOL.     III.     OF    "tHE     FIVE    ZARATHUSHTRIAN    GATHAS  "     ETC. 


PUBLISHED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

BY    THE 

OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


PREFACE. 

This  collection  of  separate  University  Lectures  here 
brought  together  under  one  cover,  hardly  needs  any 
introductory  statements,  for  I  have  been  obliged  to 
explain  in  the  course  of  editing  them  particulars  usually 
reserved  to  a  preface. 

I  have  been  especially  careful  to  forestall  any  criticism 
on  the  part  of  my  readers  in  regard  to  the  unavoidable 
repetitions.  Sometimes  years  have  passed  between  the 
occasions  upon  which  the  several  treatises  have  been 
delivered,  and  I  could  not  eliminate  all  allusion  to 
previously  stated  facts  without  tearing  the  lectures  to 
pieces.  Moreover,  some  of  them  have  been  read  aloud 
to  audiences  in  Bombay,  and  this  mode  of  extending  my 
teaching  may  be  repeated,  in  which  case  the  connection  of 
thought  between  the  lectures  will  not  be  so  apparent, 
and  the  disfigurement  of  repetition  will  disappear.  Yet 
while  apologising  for  such  occasional  redundancy,  I 
must  add  that  I  endeavour  to  increase  the  directness  of 
the  pointing,  and  also  to  expand  the  issues  at  every 
recurrence. 

There  are,  however,  several  interior  considerations  in 
the  treatment  of  the  subject  of  which  large  numbers  of  my 
readers  may  have  had  no  opportunity  whatever  to  become 
aware,  nor  of  what  I  have  endeavoured  to  do  to  meet  the 
obligations  which  rest  upon  me  with  regard  to  them. 

Without  meaning  to  be  in  the  smallest  degree  irre- 
sponsive, some  scholars  may  well  share  in  that  general 
apathy  upon  these  subjects  which  it  is  the  one  object  of 
these    pieces   to   dispel, — for  I   wish   above   everything   to 


vi  Preface. 

arouse  and  fix  attention  upon  these  matters  as  being  of 
paramount  and  immediate  interest.  The  epoch-making 
chain  of  ideas  lies  clearly  before  us  in  the  chapters  ; — and  if 
they  are  not  astonishing,  then  I  have  failed  in  my  effort  to 
express  myself,  or  else  the  susceptibility  of  my  public  is  at 
fault. 

My  '  opposition  '  may  object  that  by  my  own  showing  we 
possess  these  doctrines  now  ; — and  they  may  ask  :  '  where 
is  the  use  of  reviving  their  historical  origin'; — we  are, 
moreover,  '  used '  to  them.  I  answer  that  this  latter  in 
one  sense  of  it  is  not  the  fact ; — our  long-standing  indiffer- 
ence is  not  the  result  of  a  real  familiarity.  We  need  these 
discussions  now  to  dispel  our  sinful  inattention.*  Take 
what  I  regard  as  the  finest  product  of  the  entire  systeni, 
next  after,  or  next  before,  the  beautiful  thought  of  the 
'  Attributes  '  as  the  '  Archangels  ' ;  — I  refer  to  the  '  sub- 
jective recompense '  ; — how  many  myriads  of  refined  dis- 
ciples need  just  such  relief  as  this  doctrine  offers,  namely, 
^  the  view  that  both    Heaven    and    Hell   lie  chiefly  within 

ourselves?  It  is  nothing  less  than  splendid  as  an  intellect- 
ual result,  making  Avesta  far  and  away  the  deepest  and 
most  refined  lore  of  all  equal  antiquity  ; — for  the  Avesta 
is  the  '  document '  of  such  a  necessary  thought — that  is  to 
say,  its  first  full  presentation  in  the  history  of  religious 
distinctions.  Where  has  even  the  early  Bible  anything 
to  compare  with  it?t  It  is  now  widespread,  of  course, 
among  the  more  enlightened  of  the  clergy,  but  I  very 
greatly  doubt  whether  the  main  body  of  the  laity  feel  it 
as    they  should.     The  threats  of  a    flaming   Hell  may  be 

*  What  right  have  we  to  neglect  matters  which  concern  not  only  the 
past  record  of  our  own  spiritual  development  but  its  present  healthfulness  ? 

t  It  was  directly  in  connection  with  this  crucial  characteristic  that  an 
incident  occurred  which  greatly  surprised  and  charmed  me.  Having  come 
into  contact  with  a  group  of  young  academic  Frenchmen,  my  son  lent  a 
copy  of  my  Gathas  to  one  of  them.  On  returning  the  book,  the  reader 
cited  with  much  interest  Yasna  46,  where  the  souls  of  the  evil  are 
their  own  executioners.  Out  of  all  the  650  pages  the  keen-sighted  young 
Parisian  instantly  fixed  his  attention  upon  this. 


Preface.  vii 

more  effective  toward  the  embruted  masses,  but  the  time 
has  surely  come  when  every  human  being  should  be  forced 
to  understand  that  his  good  or  evil  thoughts,  words,  and 
deeds  are  actually  preparing  and  moulding  his  eternal 
future  destiny  ; — that  they  constitute  the  very  quintessence 
of  Heaven  or  Hell  ;— and  they  will  surely  bring  their  own 
reward  or  their  own  revenge,  as  being  the  central  element 
in  the  '  orreat  assize  '  and  the  '  last  sentence.'  * 

But  we  have  our  'opposition,'  some  of  whom  may  be 
honesdy  alarmed  at  the  distraction  of  attention  from  the 
primary  question  of  '  conversion  '  f  and  the  long-established 
views  which  tend  to  bring  it  on,  while  others  care  only 
for  the  academical  prominence  of  their  personal  studies. 
Their  first  tactics  might  be  these  : — while  acceding  at  once 
to  the  undeniable  identities  between  the  chief  doctrines  of 
the  Avesta  and  the  Exilic  Bible,  they  might  retort  that  there 
has  been  'no  historical  connection  between  them.'  But 
this  is  exactly  the  grandest  assertion  which  could  possibly 
be  made  in  the  entire  connection.  If  the  identities  exist 
without  '  historical  connection,'  then  they  arose  spon- 
taneously, irresistibly,  and  inevitably  from  the  instincts  of 
universal  human  nature — a  proposition  which  takes  its  place 
among  the  very  highest  themes  in  a  serious  psychology  and 
natural  philosophy.^  The  history  of  the  human  soul  is 
acutely  involved.  If  this  absence  of  historical  connection 
can  be  accepted,  we  have  here  the  one  paramount  curiosity  of 
all  religious  literature,  so  par-eminence — a  truly  magnificent 
fact,  deeply  touching  us  at  every  moral  fibre.  I  call  upon 
all  labourers  in  this  field  to  fix  their  attention  closely  upon 
it,  and  to  pursue  it  exhaustively  as  a  matter  of  urgent  duty. 

The  second  device,  whether  honestly  presented  or  not. 


-x- 


Not  only  does  the  Avesta  preserve  the  first  effective  apphcation  of 
these  vital  opinions,  but  we  actually  need  Avesta  to-day  to  enforce  them 
upon  us.  We  are  not  at  all  so  fully  'used'  to  them  as  we  suppose, — 
far  from  it. 

t  And  with  this  alarm  I  have  full  sympathy ;  see  the  Second  Lecture. 

%  See  Zarathiishtra,  Fhilo,  the  Ach(Bmenids,  and  Israel^  1905-6, 
vol.  i. 


\'  i  i  i  Preface. 

is  to  accede  aeain  to  the  identities,  but  ascribe  them  to  the 
iiitluence  of  Judaism  upon  Persia.  Here  again  we  have 
something  as  startling  in  the  way  of  propaganda  as  the 
other  was  important  as  an  element  in  the  original 
development  of  man  from  an  inferior  condition, — and  it 
is  difficult  to  decide  which  of  the  two  is  the  most  inter- 
esting. If  the  Jews  taught  all  Persia  the  illustrious 
catalogue,  this  not  only  shows  what  the  Jews  believed 
during  the  time  that  they  were  Persian  citizens,  but  it 
presents  a  result  of  religious  propagation  beyond  con- 
ception for  all  time,  ancient  or  modern.  What  ardent 
missionary  will  not  kindle  with  enthusiasm  over  such  an 
opinion  ?  Israel  was  then  in  that  case  not  only  stated  to 
be,  but  proved  to  be,  'a  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles,' 
with  results  incalculable  ;  —  how  can  religious  teachers 
venture  to  neglect  such  a  thino-  ?  * 

While  upon  a  third  hypothesis,  I  do  not  know  what 
they  would  like  to  say.  To  accede  to  the  identities,  and 
acknowledge  that  they  all  come  from  Persia,  would  be  to 
avow  a  debt  of  relioious  p^ratitude  which  accordincr  to  one 
view  involves  our  everlasting  salvation  ; — recall  the  tur- 
moil of  the  Pharisees  in  the  riot  reported  in  Acts  xxiii 
when  St.  Paul  appealed  to  their  sentiment  in  this  matter  of 
the  resurrection  \ — see  the  author  of  the  First  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians,  where  he  rests  our  very  salvation  upon 
that  article  of  the  Creed. 

No  self-respecting  historian  could  conceal  such  a  theme 
for  a  moment  if  he  were  really  aware  of  its  existence  ; — 
while  my  own  theory  leaves  it  alniost  equally  imperative. 
For  if  the  Persian  creed  helped  on,  defended,  and  en- 
couraged— perhaps  saved — the  Jewish  which  was  original 
with  the  Captives,  this  was  in  its  turn  a  momentous  and 
an  effective  reality.  Whichever  view  we  take  of  it,  the 
system  of  eschatological  ideas,  whether  studied  in  connection 

*  If  the  vast  Persian  Empire  was  taught  futurity  by  a  handful  of 
inspired  captives,  surely  this  was  a  religious  result  unequalled  in 
'  missionary '  records. 


Preface.  ix 

with  Judah  or  not,  is  in  a  good  sense  of  it  sensational  to 
the  last  degree  ; — to  neglect  it  would  be  folly,  to  suppress 
it  would  be  crime.  Scores  of  seminaries  of  relieious 
learning  are  touching  upon  the  subject  every  year ; — let 
them  now  dwell  upon  it  and  search  it  well  as  a  prime 
duty,  for  by  universal  verdict  it  involves  the  history  of 
all  moral  life  in  man.  Even  literary  persons  bereft  of  all 
immediate  interest  in  theology  do  not  fulfil  their  scope 
of  enterprise  until  they  examine  this  most  striking  of  all 
literary  rarities. 

What  I  have  to  say  as  to  the  identities  of  the  Avesta 
and  the  Veda  is  in  the  same  general  line,  though  of  course 
to  us  at  least  the  interests  involved  in  Avesta  are  incredibly 
more  acute  than  any  which  concern  the  Veda.  Yet  as 
Avesta  and  Veda  are  but  parts  of  one  and  the  same  original 
lore,  Veda  itself  has  some  share  in  the  great  propaganda. 
Though  upon  the  view  that  it  was  Israel  who  taught 
Persia  her  eschatology,  we  can  hardly  see  how  Israel  could 
have  imparted  that  same  eschatology  to  the  still  more 
distant  Indians  with  whom  she  had  no  such  connection  as 
she  had  with  Persia. 

My  policy  in  view  of  my  '  opposition  '  has  been  two- 
fold, or  rather  it  has  been  one  single  policy  in  two 
branches.  I  have  been  compelled  to  be  both  compre- 
hensive and  then  impartial  (see  my  chapter  on  Avesta's 
history).  I  have  represented  nearly  every  serious  exegetical 
possibility,  ancient  or  modern,  with  my  own  opinions 
independent  of  each.  Though  I  have  met  with  some 
small  combinations  who  will  not  let  me  even  ao-ree  with 
their  own  teachers,  their  falsifying  is  so  irresponsible  that 
it  does  little  harm  ; — I  warn  all  readers  of  their  petty 
irregularity  (see  Chapter  XL),  while  I  express  my  profound 
gratitude  to  the  eminent  persons  who  have  shown  their 
deep  appreciation  of  my  results  in  this  truly  dangerous 
task.  As  I  have  treated  my  subject  upon  a  scale  never 
before  attempted,  I  have  been  exposed  to  the  inevitable 
poignant   jealousies  which   utterly  dethrone   the  sanity  of 


X 


Preface. 


those  who  harbour  them, — yet   never  has  work  been  re- 
ceived with  such  an  impressive  recognition. 

With  regard  to  the  Appendix,  1  have  only  to  say  that 
it  grew  naturall)'  out  of  niy  previous  labours.  I  entered 
upon  the  entire  investigation  in  i873(?)-76,  while  working 
up  a  history  of  the  Gnostic  philosophy,  and  it  is  congruous 
enough  that  I  should  conclude  this  collection  with  one 
further  attempt  to  harmonise  philosophy  with  religion. 

L.    M.   M. 

Oxford,  I'ebnia)y^  1913. 


CONTENTS. 


Preface 


PAGES 

v-x 


FIRST  LECTURE. 
Zarathushtra  and  the  Bible  ....  1-33 

(Re-edited  from  the  Nmeteenth  Century  Review  of  1894,  and  from 
The  Open  Court  of  1909. ) 

Supplementary  to  the  same  ....         34-3^ 

SECOND    LECTURE. 

Continued    recapitulation   with    expansions    and    fresh 

pointing    .......         39~49 

THIRD    LECTURE. 

The  Philosophic  Initiative  of  Avesta        .  .  .         50-66 

FOURTH    LECTURE. 

The  Avesta  and  the  Veda  .....         67-97 

FIFTH    LECTURE. 

"^      God  has  no  Opposite  (an  interlude)  .  .  .       98-102 

SIXTH    LECTURE. 
Supposed  and  real  uncertainties  of  the  Avesta  .     103-120 


SEVENTH    LECTURE. 

The  Moral  Idea  in  the  Gatha  reviewed  . 

EIGHTH    LECTURE. 
Immortality  in  the  Gatha  . 


121-127 


128-138 


NINTH  LECTURE. 
Behistun  and  the  Avesta     . 


XI 


139-145 


xii  Contents. 

TENTH    CHAPTER. 

I'ACIES 
A    GENIAL    EPISODE  ......        '46-1 5  I 

ELEVENTH    CHAPTER. 
A  Chapter  in  Avesta's  History       .  .  .  .152-168 

APPENDIX. 

TWELFTH  LECTURE. 

God  contemplated  as  almighty  and  superpersonal — 
defined  from  universal  nature — He  is  not  the 
\vorld-soul  ......     169-180 

THIRTEENTH    LECTURE. 

God  as  almighty,  superpersonal  and  illimitable,  further 

defined  from  universal  naiure  .  .  •     1S1-187 

A  Summary  with  an  Application     ....     188-193 


OUR  OWN   RELIGION    IN   ANCIENT 

PERSIA* 

(ZOROASTER  (ZARATHUSHTRA)  AND  THE  BIBLE). 
By  Professor  Mills. 


[(This  essay,  which  is  here  for  the  fourth  time  edited  in 
EngHsh  and  enlarged,  was,  in  its  original  form,  delivered 
twice  as  a  public  lecture  before  distinguished  audiences  in 
Oxford  some  years  ago.  It  was  soon  after,  or  before, 
printed  in  the  Nineteenth  Cejttitry  Review  oi  ]^x\u2L.Yy,  1894, 
also  in  its  shorter  form  ; — and  later,  with  the  consent  of  the 
editor  of  that  periodical  and  of  the  author,  it  was  translated 
into  Gujarati  by  Mr.  D.  N.  Coorlawala,  an  accomplished 
Parsi  of  Bombay.  In  the  second  edition,  see  the  Open 
Court  of  July,  1909,  I  mentioned  that,  as  I  then  remem- 
bered, it  was  Mr.  Palanji  Madan  who  translated  it.  I  am 
now  happy  to  correct  myself,  while  I  repeat  what  I  then 
wrote  in  recognition  of  the  important  service  rendered  by 
Mr.  Palanji  Madan  in  translating  my  XXXIst  Volume 
of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  into  Gujarati  so  far  as 
the  translation  of  the  Gathas  extended  in  that  work. 

That  translation  of  this  essay  into  Gujarati  was  published 
by  the  Trustees  of  the  Sir  J.  Jejeebhoy  Translation  Fund 
of  Bombay  in  a  large  edition.  The  late  very  distinguished 
Editor  of  the  monthly  mentioned  seemed  gratified  that  the 
article  was  to  be  thus  reproduced  in  that  Oriental  language, 
and  he  would  beyond  a  doubt  not  object  to  this  enlarged 
edition  of   it  appearing   as  a  '  University   Lecture '  here. 

*  The  third  edition  appeared  in  the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Review  for 
October,  191 1,  and  in  a  later  number  under  the  title  'The  pre- 
Christian  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.' 


2  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

(It  has  also  just  lately  been  translated  Into  Italian  by  a 
talented  author,  entirely  upon  his  own  suggestion  and 
initiative,  and  has  now  been  issued  in  that  form,— and  also 
by  a  gifted  French  auditor,  but  not  yet  published  in  that 
language.) 

Those  who  may  happen  to  compare  this  lecture  with  its 
original  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  Review  or  in  its  Gujarati 
translation,  will  notice  at  once  that  it  has  been  re-arranged, 
and  somewhat  amplified,  and  also  that  I  seem  to  have 
altered  my  opinions  somewhat  as  to  one  of  the  essential 
points,  since  I  delivered  the  piece  first,  and  since  I  gave 
it  to  the  eminent  publication.  This,  however,  is  more 
apparent  than  real,  although  I  have  certainly  felt,  and 
somewhat  pointedly,  the  necessity  for  putting  the  possible, 
or  probable,  independent  oright  of  our  Jewish  immortality 
in  a  clearer  light.  Readers  will  also  easily  recognise  the 
later  insertions,  from  the  difference  in  the  stylistic  flow 
of  the  language,  as  a  later  and  to  some  extent  a  more 
pointed  animus  imparts  greater  pungency  and  vivacity 
to  one's  mode  of  expressing  one's  self.)] 


LECTURE. 

Many  interested  but  necessarily  hasty  readers  of  the 
Zend  Avesta  overlook  the  fact  that  in  the  ancient  docu- 
ments comprised  under  that  name  we  have  works  of  many 
different  ages ;  and  even  scholars  eminently  endowed  with 
the  critical  faculty  as  applied  to  other  specialities  sometimes 
fall  into  a  similar  error,  and  ignore  a  characteristic  which 
the  Avesta  possesses  in  common  with  nearly  all  other 
writings  of  its  description  ;— for  they  sometimes  turn  over  its 
pages  without  perceiving,  or  seeming  to  perceive,  that  from 
leaf  to  leaf  matter  comes  before  them  made  up  of  fragments 
nearly  or  quite  dissimilar,  and  sometimes  separated  as  to 
the  dates  of  their  authorship  by  many  hundreds  of  years. 
They  are  accordingly  apt  to  make  themselves  merry  over 
absurdities  which   prevail  in    the    later    but    still    genuine 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancietit  Persia.  3 

Avesta,  as  if  they  were  peculiar  to  the  original  Zoroastrian 
writings.* 

But  the  author,  or  authors,  of  the  earlier  Avesta  had  no 
immediate  or  certain  connection  with  the  superstitions  of 
later  centuries  ;— and  as  to  these  quaint  myths  and  trivial 
ceremonials  which  are  preserved  in  the  less  original  Avesta, 
are  we  not  apt  to  exaggerate  the  disadvantages  which  they 
bring  with  them  ?  How  can  their  presence  affect  the  value 
of  the  nobler  elements  in  these  relics  of  ancient  faith  ? 

We  are  pained  to  read  them,  but  analogous  superfluities 
survive  in  many  modern  systems.  And  indeed  some  of  the 
cruder  passages  in  the  Zend  Avesta  which  describe  the 
battle  with  the  Demon  of  Putrefaction,  and  which  might 
seem  to  some  of  us  most  grotesque,  were  hardly  superfluities, 
for  they  showed  a  sanitation  which  it  would  be  better  for 
us  to  follow  rather  than  condemn. f  In  tracing  the  fol- 
lowing analogies,  which  I  take  from  the  genuine,  yet  still 
newer,  Avesta  J  as  well  as  from  the  Gathas,  I  shall  leave  out 

*  It  is  even  not  uncommon  to  speak,  or  write,  of  the  Avesta  as  if  it 
were  identical  with  the  later  Zoroastrianism,  the  revived  system  of 
Sasanian  times,  which  is,  however,  as  difTerent  from  both  the  earlier 
and  the  later  Avesta  as  the  '  Lives  of  the  Saints,'  for  instance,  are  from 
the  New  Testament  record. 

f  Consciously  or  unconsciously  they  anticipated  much  modern 
theory  upon  this  subject,  and  led  the  way  in  the  most  practical  of  all 
sciences — sanitation, — and  their  suggestions  as  to  this  particular  seem 
to  some  disinterested  critics  to  have  been  indirectly  reproduced  in  the 
Book  of  Leviticus. 

\  The  earlier  Avesta  consists  of  the  Gathas,  the  remnants  of  the 
original  hymns  of  Zarathtishtva,  and  his  immediate  associates  or  fol- 
lowers. They  are  most  dissimilar  to  the  rest  of  the  Avesta  and  still 
more  so  to  the  apocryphal  Zoroastrianism.  They  were  carefully  trans- 
lated by  me  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XXXL,  so  long  ago  as 
October  1887,  and  their  Zend,  Pahlavi,  Sanskrit,  and  Persian  texts 
were  edited,  and  the  first  three  translated,  by  me  with  a  Commentary 
in  my  Study  of  the  Gathas,  some  650  pages,  1902-04.  They  may  be 
provisionally  placed  at  about  700  to  900  b.c,  though  they  astonishingly 
ignore  the  cults  of  Mithra,  Haoma  (Soma),  and  of  the  sun,  moon,  etc., 
etc.,  which  might  argue  a  still  earlier  date  for  them.  The  remaining 
parts  of  the  Avesta  are  of  different  ages,  say  in  their  origins  at  least 
from  600  to  300  B.C.,  while,  as  in  the  case  of  every  other  ancient 
book,  interesting  additions  of  an  indefinitely  later  origin  occur  here  and 


4  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Perisa. 

these  inferior  details  generally,  abandoning  them  as  rare 
morsels  to  the  collectors  of  ancient  bits.  What  is  here 
intended  is  to  call  attention  to  the  little-known,  though  long 
since  reported,  fact,  that  it  pleased  the  Divine  Power  to 
reveal  some  of  the  fundamental  articles  of  our  Catholic  creed 
first  to  Zoroastrians,  though  these  ideas  later  arose  spon- 
taneously and  independently  among  the  Jews  ;— secondly, 
I  wish  to  emphasise  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  this 
separate  origin  among  the  Jewish  tribes  of  the  Exile  ;— 
and  thirdly,  I  wish  to  show  that  the  Persian  system  must 
have  exercised  a  very  powerful,  though  supervening  and 
secondary  influence  upon  the  growth  of  these  doctrines 
among  the  Exilic  and  post- Exilic  pharisaic  Jews,  as  well 
as  upon  the  Christians  of  the  New  Testament,  and  so 
eventually  upon  ourselves. 

After  this  brief  preface  let  me  proceed  at  once  to 
cite  the  documental  facts  as  to  the  whole  system,  only 
remarking  that  they  are  practically  uncontested  by  any 
persons  whose  views  are  worth  considering,  for  it  is  by  no 
means  necessary  just  here  to  go  into  the  closer  technical 
linguistic  distinctions*  in  such  a  delineation  as  this.  Let  us 
now  first  trace  the  Iranian  ideas  where  their  analogy  with 
the  Jewish  seems  most  important. 

To  begin  with  our  excerpts  from  the  Sacred  Book  of  the 
Iranians,  we  may  consider  the  connection  where  it  is  also 
most  obvious,  that  is  to  say,  as  to  the  Nature  of  the  Deity. 

I,  First  of  all  He  is  Sjiprenze^  and  therefore  One.  The 
usual  throng  of  sub-godlets  which  appear  with  Him  no 
more  impair  His  Supreme  Unity  than  our  own  Archangels 
impair  the  Supreme  Unity  of  Jehovah  of  Hosts  or  of 
our   own    misunderstood    Tri-Unity.     There    can    be    but 

there.  Some  writers,  while  holding  the  Gathas  to  date  from  about  700 
B.C.,  put  even  vigorous  parts  of  the  later  but  still  genuine  Avesta  at  a 
thousand  years  later.  What  happened  then  in  that  long  gap ;— did 
Iranian  literature  produce  nothing  ? 

*  While  even  the  original  passages  could   be  learned  by  any  apt 
scholar  with  a  competent  teacher  in  the  course  of  a  very  short  time. 


Our  Own  Religioti  in  Ancient  Persia.  5 

one*  '  Greatest  of  the  Gods  who  made  the  others,  with  this 
earth  and  yon  Heaven,  who  made  man,  and  amenity  for 
him.'t  But  He  is  a  moral  God,  His  Supremacy  is  Hmited  — 
by  His  own  character,  which  is  not  irrationally  dishonest ; — 
for  He  is  not  logically  responsible  either  through  origination  ^t,.^/,, 
or  through  permission,  for  the  existence  of  sinners  and  their 
sufferings,  the  Universe  being  divided  into  two  immense 
departments.  'There  were  two  first  Spirits,  a  better  (they 
two),  and  an  evil,  as  to  thought,  as  to  word,  and  as  to 
deed, — and  when  these  two  spirits  came  together  to  make 
life  and  non-life  (they  arranged)  what  at  the  last  the  world 
should  be, — the  best  life  of  the  faithful,  but  for  the  faithless 
the  worst  mind  '  .  .  .\, — a  doctrine  of  mighty  import  indeed  — 
and  consequence,  and  we  must  discuss  it  fully  and  at  once. 
For  it  would  be  a  clumsy  history  of  philosophy  which  would 
allow  the  present  noble  monotheism  of  the  Parsis  to  cheat 
us  of  the  speculatively  precious  element  of  dualism  as  it  >^ 
exists  in  their  genuine  writings,  {a)  [(As  regards  the  later 
doctrinal  development  among  the  Zoroastrians  whereby 
they  entirely  extinguished  the  vital  elements  of  Dualism, 
making  the  Supreme  Good  God  at  last  completely  vic- 
torious, all  evil  beingr  eliminated  in  the  final  restorations 
see  just  below  ; — but  this  was  hardly  a  part  of  the  original 
concept.)]  To  resume.  The  good  and  morally  Supreme 
Ahura  is  exalted  as  the  one  only  real  God  in  our  modern 
sense  of  the  term  ; — but  He  was  One  in  adoration  as  well 
as  in  definition,  supreme  because  His  'goodness'  makes 
Him  great,  'His  Unity'  being  that  of  His  Truth,  Bene- 
volence, Authority,  and  sacred  Energy ;  see  above  and 
below, — though   the    equally  original    evil   God,  as    being 

*  See  also  the  very  name  of  the  so-called  and  really  one  God  ; — it 
was  Elohim,  meaning  '  Gods,' — and  it  once  referred  to  a  recognised 
plurality  in  Deities  ; — while  Ahura  created  the  highest  of  the  sub-gods, 
even  Mithra,  at  times  otherwise  His  close  companion. 

t  See    Behistun.      Dualism    in    the    Inscription  ? — Auramazda   is        i/ 
signally  the  creator  of  what  is  '  good.' — '  He  did  not  make  evil '  as        \ 
Yahveh  Elohim  is  said  to  have  done  in  Isaiah  xliv.,  xlv. 

X  See  Y.  XXX,  4. 


1 


6  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

independent,  limits  Him,  completely  exculpating  Him 
from  all  share  in  crime  ; — in  fact,  entirely  aside  from  any 
personal  Devil,  He  would  be  sufficiently  limited  by  His 
own  Attributes*;  see  above. 

{b)  Does  analogy  fail  tis  here   as  between  the  Iranian 
and  Jewish  concepts  ? — and  if  so,  to  what  extent  ? 

The  Jewish  pre-Christian,  but  post-Exilic  thought  was 
doubtless  as  replete  with  diabolic  demonism  as  the  Chris- 
tian and  the  post-Christian,  though  that  of  the  Christian 
epoch  was  obviously  under  the  control  of  the  exorcising 
Redeemer.  Does  this  last  particular,  which  implies  the 
inferiority  of  Satan,  destroy  all  analogy  here  between  Iran 
and  Christian  Israel  as  to  this  essential  matter? — Not  fully, 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  should  here  view  the  matter. 
Though  Angra  Mainyu  was  obviously  inferior  to  Ahura 
in  power,  neither  one  of  the  two  could  be  logically  regarded 
as  the  possible  annihilator  of  the  other  ;  so  that  the  one 
inferior  in  power  was  to  a  certain  point  independent ; 
— the  Saviour  might  temporarily  frustrate,  or  seem  to 
frustrate  his,  Satan's,  malign  purposes,  but  He  plainly  could 
not  annihilate  him, — otherwise  he  would  at  once  have 
done  so. — (What  is  eternally  original  could  not  logically 
be  regarded  as  coming  to  an  end  through  the  power  of  any 
other  being,  though  an  eternally  Original  force  might  yet  of 
course  be  inferior  within  the  scope  of  its  legitimate  effec- 
tivity  to  another  equally  independent  force, — for  there  can 
be  but  one  all-inclusive  force  which  has  no  inferior ; — yet 
there  can  be  relatively  independent  and  eternal  forces  which 
have  no  immediate  connection  with  one  another,  and  here 
inferiority  and  superiority  are  greatly  widespread  ;— but  such 
a  force  could  have  never  met  any  other  in  the  past  capable  of 
annihilating  it,  otherwise  throughout  a  past  eternity  the  meet- 
ing must  have  taken  place  with  the  result  under  considera- 
tion);—  No  theology  should,  however,  be  pushed  too  closely 
to  all  its  logical  results  ; — and  we  might  indeed  even  infer 
such  an  '  annihilation  '  of  the  evil  powers  from  those  'restora- 

*  As  a  God  of  Honour. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  7 

tions  '  of  all  men  ;— see  above  ; — and  this  from  some  expres- 
sions made  use  of  even  in  the  later  but  still  genuine  Avesta 
as  well  as  in  the  Gathas  themselves,  together  with  those  in 
the  later  Zoroastrianism ;— see  above  and  below; — though,  as 
seen  above,  this  would  sacrifice  all  logic, — for  if  the  Good 
God  could  save  all  men,  He  should  have  done  this  earlier  in 
their  career.  To  allow  human,  or  other  spiritual  beings  to 
commit  revolting  crimes  for  the  purpose  of  letting  them  see 
through  experience  how  evil  sin  is,  would  be  a  policy  ot 
which  a  Good  and  Omnipotent  God  would  hardly  be 
capable.   [( — And  who  of  us  really  believes  that  he  was  i* — )] 

But  if,  on  the  contrary,  the  Good  Iranian  God,  even  He 
of  the  Gathas,  is  indeed  to  bring  in  universal  salvation  at 
the  end  of  any  period,  however  restricted  or  protracted 
this  period  might  be  supposed  to  be,  then,  in  that  case,  the 
difference  between  such  a  phase  of  Zarathushtrianism  and 
some  forms  of  Judaism  and  of  liberal  post-Christianity  in 
this  respect  7^//^,  and  they,  these  systems,  are  here,  if  only 
illogically,  one, — and  but  for  the  'forever  and  forever'  of 
the  Gathic  Iranian  Hell,  one  might  yet  claim  for  the  analogy 
between  the  systems  a  persistent  validity  even  as  to  this 
fundamental  particular. 

But  no  similarities,  however  protrusive,  should  blind  us 
to  the  real  and  apparently  radical  difference  here  between 
the  creeds  as  mainly  expressed  by  their  original  authorita- 
tive exponents  ; — and  the  striking  facts  of  opinion,  as  they 
existed  among  important  sections  of  both  parties,  remain  in 
all  their  monumental  force. 

{c)  Can  we  not,  however^  in  regard  to  some  large  sections 
of  the  early  Jewish  population,  modify  this  apparent  differe7ice 
from  an  opposite  and  unexpected  quarter,  abysmal  though 
the  difference  referred  to  may  well  seem  to  most  of  us 
to  be  ? — It  is  rather  a  colossal  question  never  before,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  mooted  ;— but  we  must  grapple  with  it 
none  the  less. 

Is,  then,  Yahveh  Elohim  Himself  (m)  always  actually 
so  supreme  as  to  be  independent  of  all  limitation  on  the  part 


8  Ou7''  Oivn  Relio-ion  in  Ancient  Persia. 


s 


of  the  evil  Gods  of  the  Gentiles?  If  not,  were  not  the 
Jews  themselves  sometimes  in  a  certain  essential  sense  of 
it  'dualists'? 

I  very  seriously  raise  the  solemn  question  whether  the 
Jewish  writers  of  the  Old  Testament  earlier  or  late  at  all 
really  believed  their  YaJiveh  Elolilm  to  be  absolutely  supreme 
in  so  far  as  to  have  been  the  creator  of  either  Satan,  or  of 
Baal,  or  of  any  of  the  Demon-gods.  We  know  indeed  that 
they,  the  Jewish  prophets,  accredited  the  existence  of  these 
Beings  as  a  matter  only  too  emphatically  real,  and  by  no 
means  uninterruptedly  regarded  them  as  being  altogether 
creatures  of  the  imagination  (see  the  frequent  comparison  of 
them  with  Yahveh  Elohim).  But  when,  and  in  so  far  as,  they 
thus  believed  them,  these  gentile  gods,  to  be  really  existing 
spiritual  beings,  in  how  far  did  they  then  suppose  their  own 
Yahveh  Elohim  to  have  been  their  original  creator,  either 
bringing  them  into  existence  as  being  holy  in  their  nature  be- 
fore a  fall  like  '  Lucifer's,'  or  causine  them  to  arise  as  beinsf 
originally  of  evil  character  ? — The  question  is  very  serious. 
The  foolish  relief  offered  us  by  the  doctrine  that  Yahveh 
Elohim,  as  God  the  Father,  was  not  responsible  for  the  fall 
of  beings  who  He  foresaw  would  become  evil  when  He 
created  them,  is  no  longer  available,  and  could  not  have 
long  continued  to  satisfy  any  sober-minded  sage  ;— but  if  the 
leading  Jews  in  large  numbers  thus  in  due  sequence  uncon- 
sciously, or  openly,  rejected  the  view  that  their  good  God 
Yahveh  originally  created  the  Evil  Gods  of  their  enemies — 
directly  or  indirectly,  in  any  shape  or  chain  of  causality  or 
responsibility  whatsoever,  then  such  ancient  Israelites  were 
in  verity,  though  they  may  not  have  been  consciously, 
dnalists,^  not  far  indeed  from  the  type  of  Zarathushtra ; — 
they  held  to  the  existence  of  a  Being,  or  Beings,  who  was, 
or  who  were,  originally  evil,  and  so  they  held,  to  an  original 

*  Recall  also  the  very  expression  '  God '  .'applied  to  Satan  as  the 
'  God  of  this  world.'  If  Satan  was  a  'God  of  this  world,'  and  Yahveh 
was  the  '  God  of  Heaven,  we  have  here  at  once  something  extremely 
like  the  '  Pair  '  at  Y.  XXX. 


Otir  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 


"k^ 


evil  principle,  which  is  dualism,  and  that  dualism  remains 
one  of  the  most  interesting  suggestions  which  have  ever 
been  presented,  and  one  indeed  which,  in  its  elements,  if 
not  in  its  detail,  is  still  unconsciously  but  largely  followed.* 

So  much  for  this  most  fundamental  of  all  discriminations. 

Others  of  the  utmost  interest  offer  themselves  here  at 
once  as  being  closely  connected, — but,  in  the  leading  of  a 
more  stringent  logic,  we  should  postpone  them  for  later 
expansion,  now  facing  that  other  most  practical  of  doctrines 
which  often  really  gives  the  whole  discussion  its  immediate 
importance  ;— and  this  is  the  great  question  of  the  Human 
Itmnortality  /—although  many  might  indeed  well  say  that 
the  two  subjects  could  be  profitably  studied  quite  apart,— 
and,  in  fact,  that  they  ought  to  be  so  studied  separately. 

II.  I  fear  that  we  too  little  realise  how  very  uncertain 
the  doctrine  of  a  future  life  was  in  the  minds  of  pious  jews, 
even  at  the  time  of  our  Lord.  The  Sadducees,  as  we 
understand,  believed  in  '  neither  angel,  nor  spirit,  nor 
resurrection,'  and  they  quite  held  their  own  with  the 
Pharisees  ; — see  even  the  street  riot  of  Acts  xxiii.  ; — 
several  princely  high  -  priests  were  of  their  clique,  the 
entire  party  of  the  Asmonaean  or  Hasmonaean  princes 
inclined  to  this  opinion.  It  seems  to  many  of  us  most 
curious  that  the  sect  among  the  ancient  people  of 
God,  which  especially  claimed  the  title  of  '  purists  't  and 
sticklers  for  the  ancient  Pentateuch,  should  have  been  well- 
nigh  absolute  disbelievers  in  what  are  now  considered  to  be 
the  essential  elements  of  religion  ;— see  also  the  expression 
'who  only   hath  immortality,' and  also  'who  brought   life 

*  What  is  the  present  advancing  pessimism  (so  called)  but  the 
recognition  of  the  original  necessity  of  evil  co-existing  with  good  ?  The 
Avesta  here  anticipates  momentous  distinctions  ;-recall  the  later 
schemes  of  the  Gnostics ; — as  to  which  see  also  Jakob  Boehine,  Fichte  and 
Hegel.  Some  writers  have  here  indeed  compared  the  supposed  Baby- 
lonian dualism  especially  m  regard  to  Isaiah  xliv.,  xlv.,  etc.,  but  such 
'  pairings '  of  the  throngs  of  Gods  should  hardly  be  here  mentioned. 

f  Though  the  name,  being  derived  from  the  proper  name  of  some 
prominent  teacher,  Zadok,  did  not  necessarily  imply  any  especial  claims 
to  '  Righteousness'; — yet  the  force  of  the  word,  as  analogously  elsewhere 
in  similar  cases,  was  doubtless  sometimes  felt. 


lO  Oiir  Ozvn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

and  immortality  to  light'  through  the  gospel,  as  if  the 
subject  had  been  till  lately  obscured. 

If  such  a  state  of  things  existed  at  the  time  of  our  Lord, 
when  both  the  doctrine  of  immortality  and  that  of  resurrec- 
tion had  long  been  familiar  as  theories,  what  must  have  been 
the  condition  of  opinion  upon  these  subjects  while  the 
influence  of  the  Pentateuch,  in  which  these  doctrines  were 
not  distinctly  revealed  at  all,  was  as  yet  not  affected  by  the 
large  addition  to  canonical  Scripture  made  later  ? 

Few  scientific  theologians  will  deny  that  the  full  doctrine 
of  a  conscious  and  accountable  immortality  was  scarcely 
mentioned  before  the  later  Isaiah*;  that  is  to  say,  not 
before  the  Captivity,  whereas  the  Zoroastrian  scriptures 
are  one  mass  of  spiritualism,  referring  all  final  results  to  the 
heavenly  or  infernal  worlds.— We  shall  return  to  the  details 
for  their  necessary  amplification  further  on. 

{a)  This  is,  however,  also  the  proper  place  to  emphasise 
the  main  essential  moral  and  intellectual  elements  of  this 
future  immortality  which  we  have  indeed  already  inclu- 
sively adumbrated.  In  close  accordance  with  the  moral 
character  of  God  is  the  deep  subjectivity  of  the  Religion. 

Holiness  is  prayed  for,  and  Heaven  and  Hell  are  chiefly 
mental  states  : — '  O  Asha  (Angel  of  the  Holy  Law),  shall  I 
see  thee,  and  Vohumanah  (the  Good  Mind),  I  finding 
Sraosha  (God's  Heeding  Ear  and  man's),  the  way  to 
Ahura  (or  'finding  His  throne'),  Y.  XXVIII.  5. 

The  last  line  in  the  passage  cited  above,  Y.  XXX.  4, 
seems  to  imply  that  the  future  life  of  the  righteous  was  the 
'Best  Mind';  from  this  the  word  'Best'  occurs  as  used 
by  the  Persians  for  '  Heaven.' 

Rewards  and  punishments  are  self-induced,  Y.  XXXI. 
20  ;  *  and  this  which  is  your  life,  O  ye  vile,  with  (your) 
own  deeds  your  own  souls  have  brought  you.'  'Cursed  by 
their  souls  and  selves  (their  being's  nature)  in  the  Druj- 

■■'■  The  future  existence  of  souls  after  death  was  as  dim  in  the  pre- 
exilic  Bible,  as  it  was  in  the  older  Greek  classics ; — in  fact  this  latter, 
the  Greek  immortality,  seems  to  show  rather  the  more  of  animation. 


Our  Ozvn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  \  i 

Lie-Demon's    Home    at    last    their    bodies    lie    (or,    '  their 
citizenship  (?)  is)/  Y.  XLVI.  12  ?* 

III.  Having  endeavoured  here  at  the  outset  to  engage- 
attention  by  putting  the  two  most  vital  elements  into  point, 
we  can  now  return  to  the  scarcely  less  imposing  extended 
detail  which  presents  itself  in  regard  to  the  chief  concepts 
already  touched  upon. 

{a)  Ahura  Mazda,  the  Living  Lord,  the  great  Creator 
(or  possibly  the  '  Wise  One '),  has  a  most  Bountiful,  or  most 
Holy  Spirit,  who  is  sometimes  identical  with  Him,  and 
there  is  precisely  the  same  difficulty  in  distinguishing 
between  Ahura  and  His  Holy  (?)  Spirit,  which  meets  us 
in  the  Semitic  when  we  endeavour  to  decide  positively  in 
the  analogous  obscurity.  (Often  we  cannot  tell  whether 
Yahveh's  attribute  or  His  creature  is  meant.) 

YasnaXXVni,  i  : 

'  With  hands  outstretched,  I  beseech  for  the  first 
(blessing)  of  Thy  most  Bounteous  or  (holy)  Spirit.'* 

See  also  Yasna  L  i  : 

'  I  invoke,  and  I  will  complete  my  sacrifice  to  Ahura 
Mazda,  the  Creator,  the  radiant,  the  glorious,  the  greatest 
and  the  best,  the  most  firm,  (who  sends  His)  joy-creating 
grace  afar,  who  made  us  and  has  fashioned  us,  who  has 
nourished  and  protected  us,  who  is  the  most  bountiful  (the 
most  holy)  Spirit.'f 

ib)  In  the  seven  Bountiful  (or  'holy')  Immortals  (the 
Amshaspends  of  literature)  we  have  a  union  which  re- 
minds us  of  the  Sabellian  Trinity  (Yasht  XIII.  82): — 

'  We  sacrifice  to  the  redoubted  guardian  spirits  of  the 
Bountiful  Immortals  who  are  glorious,  whose  look  itself 
has  power  (their  look  produces  what  they  wish),  who  are 
lofty  and  coming  on  to  help  us,  who  are  swiftly  strong 
and  divine,  everlasting  and  holy,  who  are  Seven, j;  and  all 
of  one  thought,  of  one  word,  and  of  one  deed,  whose 
thought  is  the  same,  whose  word  is  the  same,  and  whose 

*  About  700  to  900  B.C.,  or  earlier.  f  Somewhat  later. 

\   Literary  confusion  ; — they  were  seven  only  with  Ahura. 


12  0?^r  Oivii  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

deeds  are  the  same,  who  have  one  Father  and  Commander, 
Ahura  Mazda  ; — each  of  whom  sees  the  other's  soul  re- 
volving good  thoughts,  thinking  of  good  words,  contem- 
plating good  actions,  whose  abode  is  the  Home  of  Sublimity 
(or  'Song'), — and  shining  are  their  paths  as  they  come 
down  to  us  to  offerinor.'* 

While  they  are  thus  unified,  Ahura  Mazda  being 
illogically-included  within  their  number,  they  are  yet 
separate.  Vohumanah  is  the  divine  benevolence,  the 
good  mind  of  the  Deity,  likewise  alive  within  His  saints, 
and  later  personified  as  a  separate  Archangel,  while  even 
in  the  Gathas  it  represents  the  holy  or  correct  citizen. 
Asha,  the  Vedic  Rita,  is  the  divine  Order,  the  sym- 
metry and  perfection  in  the  Law,  the  ritual,  and  in  the 
soul,  while  at  the  same  time  a  poetically  personified  Arch- 
angel. Khshathra  is  His  sovereign  power  realised  in  a 
kingdom  of  righteousness,  and  yet  also  poetically  per- 
sonified. Ar(a)maiti  is  our  energetic  zeal  and  piety,  the 
Active  mind,  inspiring  energy  of  the  Deity  first  thought 
of  as  the  '  ploughing  of  agriculture  ';  to  aratrum,  and  from 
this  latter  called  the  '  earth '  in  both  Veda  and  Avesta,  as 
against  the  non-toiling  and  theft-murder  schemes  of  the 
raiding  Turks.  She  is  also  in  figurative  conception  God's 
daughter,  and  this  even  in  the  Gfithas,  where  '  God '  is 
otherwise  only  in  general  the  '  Father  of  the  good,'  the 
Fire  being  '  God's  Son,'  exclusively  in  the  later  Avesta. 
She  is  also  implanted  within  the  minds  of  the  faithful  as 
a  divine  inspiration. 

Haurvatat  is  God's  Perfection  consummated  through 
His  foregoing  Truth,  Love,  Power  and  Vital  Energy,  while 
the  name  is  borrowed,  or  promoted  from  the  haurvatat 
'  wholesomeness  ' — i.e.,  '  the  health  and  success  '  of  man. 
[(It  was  God's  completeness  like  that  of  man's  as  reflected 
in  the  body's  health,  then  soon  perfected  in  the  weal  of 
soul  and  mind  as  well  as  of  body,  an  idea  evidently 
necessary  to  the  roundness  of  the  scheme,  and  added 
'•'■  Say  300  to  100  B.C.,  in  its  origins  at  least,  or  greatly  earlier  ? 


Our  Oivii  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  13 

in  most  modern  theologies)]; — while  Ameretatat  is  their 
Immortality,  God's  Eternity  and  man's  Death's  absence, 
a  veritable  victory  over  death  begun  in  its  long  postpone- 
ment to  old  age  here,— which  last  was  indeed  the  original 
point-meaning  of  the  word,— but  continued  in  eternal 
Deathlessness  in  a  future  state/'' 

From  the  second  to  the  seventh  they  are  therefore  the 
personified  thoughts  sent  forth  from  the  mind  of  God  to 
ennoble  and  redeem  His  people.  That  the  general  de- 
scription of  such  notorious  and  striking  conceptions  as  ( 
these,  immensely  widespread  as  they  were  in  the  dominant 
power  of  Asia,  and  lying  at  the  logical  root  of  Zoro- 
astrianism,  should  have  become  known  to  the  Jews  of  the 
Captivity  and  to  their  descendants  before  the  date  of  some, 
if  not  all,  of  the  Exilic  Prophets,  is  scarcely  less  than 
certain,  for  they  were  also  signally  identified  by  the  dis- 
tant Greeks  with  the  general  theology  of  Persia  far  and 
wide,  without  distinction  of  provinces —and  the  Greeks  also 
heard  of  them,  in  their  deepest  and  purest  sense,  before 
the  date  of  Daniel  (see  the  '  invaluable'  passage  in  Plutarch 
evidently  reproducing  the  ideas  of  Theopompus,  whom  he 
quotes,  also  cited  by  me  elsewhere).  If  the  priests  of  Cyrus 
conferred  to  the  smallest  degree  with  those  of  Ezra,  then 
not  only  the  Gnostics  felt  its  influence,  but  the  pre- 
Christian  and  Christian  theology.  And  in  the  Book  of 
Tobit,  which  also  contains  prominently  the  name  of  an 
Avesta  demdn,  we  have  an  allusion  to  these  Sevent  Spirits 
(chap.  xii.  1 5)  at  Ragha,  the  Zarathushtrian  centre  (let  it  be 
noticed),  one  of  whom,  those  Spirits,  Is  actually  mentioned 
as  Raphael,  the  Jewish  Archangel,  so  positively  '  identify- 
ing '  the  two  '  sets  '  of  '  Seven  Spirits,'  though  in  a  somewhat 

*  The  '  hundred  autumns  '  of  the  Rik  were  the  hope  of  all,  and 
this  idea  of  a  prseternaturally  extended  life  upon  earth — that  is  to  say, 
of  a  '  temporal  immortality  ' — merged  into  that  of  another  '  deathless- 
ness '  beyond  the  grave,  becoming  an  universal  aspiration  with  the 
Irano-indians,  as  it  is,  indeed,  elsewhere  ;-for  what  nation  ever  existed 
without  some  form  of  it  ? 

t  One  edition  (!)  omits  the  word  '  Seven  '  amply  supplied  elsewhere. 


14  Oiir  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

loose  manner.  So  also  in  Zechariah  (iv.  lo)  we  have  the 
'  Seven  which  are  the  eyes  of  the  Lord,  and  which  run  to 
and  fro  upon  the  earth  '; — and  this  is  further  expanded  in 
Rev.  V.  6  :  '  And  I  saw  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  a  Lamb 
standing  as  though  it  had  been  slain,  having  seven  horns 
and  seven  eyes,  which  are  the  "  Seven  Spirits  "  of  God 
sent  forth  into  all  the  earth.'  (How  sublime  it  all  becomes 
when  we  look  upon  it  in  the  light  of  parallel  development 
in  unassisted  growth.) — 

[((^)  Negative  arguments  as  regards  the  extent  of  terri- 
tory reached  by  these  doctrines,  drawn  from  the  absence  of 
the  named  'Seven'  from  the  Inscriptions,  are  the  mistakes  of 
non-experts,  as  well  as  are  the  negative  arguments  with 
regard  to  their  dates.  These  names  are  equally  absent  from 
large  portions  of  the  Avesta,  and  no  inference  can  be  made 
from  their  absence  from  the  Inscriptions.  (Certainly  not, 
as  we  may  pause  to  state,  upon  the  ground  that  they,  the 
Inscriptions,  are  in  themselves  a  completed  unit,  while  they 
yet  omit  some  of  these  personifications,  which  should,  as  an 
objector  might  suppose,  be  included  within  all  complete 
documents  dealing  with  the  Iranian  Religion,  and  that,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  portions  of  the  Avesta  which  omit  these 
personifications  are  but  parts  of  a  whole,  and  therefore 
might  not  be  expected  to  contain  allusions  even  to  leading 
concepts  ; — this  negative  point  has  little  force,  from  the  fact 
that  the  Achsemenian  Inscriptions,  while  perhaps  the  most 
important  and  extensive  of  sculptured  writings  upon  rocks 
are  yet,  nevertheless,  necessarily  very  circumscribed  when 
regarded  as  literature.  (And  how  long  must  it  have  taken 
to  complete  them,  by  workmen  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write  in  any  language,  while  the  composers  also  should  not 
have  been  expected  to  mention  all  particulars.)) 

The  number  '  seven,'  together  with  the  very  names  of 
the  Ameshas,  though  not  visible  upon  the  Inscriptions, 
found,  as  we  have  seen,  its  way  to  distant  shores,  and 
the  report  of  Plutarch  just  cited,  concerned,  as  we  have  also 
emphasised,  the  general   religion   of  all   Persia,  so  that  it 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  15 

could  not  have  been  intended  to  exclude  that  form  of  the 
so  widely  extended  Faith  which  prevailed  about  Behistun 
and  Nakhsh  i  Rustam.  And  that  these  same  ideas  at  least, 
which  are  expressed  in  the  names  of  the  Amesha  Spentas 
were  prominent  in  Farsistan  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
two  of  them  are  combined  in  the  name  of  an  Emperor, 
Artakhshatra,  which  is  Asha  (A[r]sha)  plus  Khshathra. 

[{-To  be  complete  it  may  be  well  to  pause  here  again 
for  a  moment,  and  on  the  other  hand  guard  my  readers 
aofainst  a  false  identification. 

In  the  case  of  Arachosia  the  eastern  province  (better 
Harachosia,  as  the  first  s  of  the  Indian  Sarasvati  requires  a 
corresponding  organic  Ji),  the  name  stands  only  as  Harauvati 
upon  Behistun,  so  in  the  Elamatic  (Susian)  there  is  no  h, 
for  the  organic  second  '  ^ '  of  Sarasvati  ;  h  appears  only  in 
the  Babylonian  ;— though  in  other  cases  '/^'  is  a  letter  easily 
dropped;  see  India — (Greek) — instead  of  Hindia ;  com- 
pare Hindoo  and  SitidJm.  I  think  we  had  better  restore 
the  ' h'  and  read  Harauhvati.  Otherwise  Harauvati  might 
be  simply  the  equivalent  of  Av.  Ha(u)rvatat(l),  Indian 
Sarvatati,  the  fifth  Amesha.  Religious  names  were  not 
unusual  when  applied  to  countries  ;  recall  Arminiya  (adj.), 
which  seems  clearly  related  to  Ar(a)maiti,  the  fourth 
Amesha  ; — see  also  the  name  of  the  great  Province  of 
Azarbaijan  (Adarbaijan),  named  from  the  '  Fire-altars.' 
But,  as  said,  these  remarks  are  a  mere  interlude. — )] 

Angra  Mainyu  does  not  indeed  occur  upon  the 
Inscription,  but  His  Chief  Creature,  the  Female  (.?)  Devil 
of  Deception,  the  drauga  —  draogha — that  is,  the  Drzcj(k), 
see  above — is  present  everywhere,  though  her,  or  '  his  '  (?), 
essential  characteristics  are  more  frequently  expressed 
under  the  verbal  than  under  the  nominal  form.  '  He  lied' 
thunders  everywhere  from  the  monumental  surfaces  ;-those 
reprobations  must  have  been  constantly  repeated  in  greatly 
varied  forms  ;  and  these  ideas  in  their  original,  or  later, 
shape  may  well  have  helped  to  mould  Jewish  and  Christian 
expressions. 


i6  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Mithra  and  Anahita  too  seem  to  have  stepped  bodily 
out  of  the  Avesta.      Many  turns  of  speech  are  strikingly 

common    to    the    Avesta    and    the    Inscriptions.)] To 

resume. 

IV.  Then  as  to  the  attributes  of  God  more  definitively 
considered  in  their  relation  to  man ;— He  is  our  Creator 
(so  already  necessarily  alluded  to  above  upon  the  Attri- 
butes), and  perhaps  also,  in  a  theological  sense,  sovereign; 
cf.  Yasna  XXIX.  4  in  S.  B.  E.  XXXI.,  and  in  the 
Gathas  : — 

'  The  Great  Creator  is  most  mindful  of  the  utterances  or 
commands  which  have  been  fulfilled  beforehand  hitherto  by 
demon-worshippers,  ■^-  and  by  faithful  men,  and  of  those 
which  shall  be  fulfilled  by  them  hereafter; — He,  Ahura,  is  the 
discerning  arbiter,  so  shall  it  be  to  us  as  He  shall  will  (see 
also  Y.  XXXI.  14).  —  He  is  omniscient  (see  Y.  XXXI.  13, 14). 
Wt.  \s  our  lawgiver  {\.Y^^y^\.  11)  and  teac/ier  {Y.'X.'X.yil.^; 
Y.  XXXII.  13).— Hewillestablisha/§zV^^^v/^;;/(Y.XXVIII. 
4).  It  is  for  the  poor  (Y.  XXXIV.  3) :  "  What  is  your  king- 
dom, what  are  your  riches,  that  I  may  become  your  own  in 
my  actions  with  the  righteous  order,  and  thy  good  mind,  to 
care  for  your  poor?"  (Y.LI  1 1.  9): — "O  Mazda,  Thine  is  the 
Kingdom,  and  by  it  Thou  bestowest  the  highest  of  blessings 
on  the  right-living  poor." — It  is  endangered,  and  yet  in  the 
end  victorious.  It  has  a  propaganda  (Y.  XXXI.  3)  :  "  With 
tongue  of  thy  mouth  do  thou  speak,  that  I  may  make  all  the 
living  believers."  God  is  our  friend,  protector,  strengthener, 
and  unchangeable  (Y.  XXXI.  7).  "  These,  O  Spirit,  mayst 
thou  cause  to  prosper,  Thou,  who  art  for  every  hour  the 
same." — He  is  owr  Judge  (Y.  XLIII.  4).'" — There  is  a  day 
or  period  of  judgment  (Y.  XLIII.  5,6):  "  Yea,  I  conceived 
of  Thee  as  Bounteous,  O  Ahura  Mazda,  when  I  beheld  Thee 
as  supreme  in  the  actions  of  life,  when,  as  rewarding  deeds 
and  words.  Thou  didst  establish  evil  for  the  evil,  and 
blessings  for  the  good  by  Thy  great  virtue  or  '  great 
wisdom  '  in  the  creation's  final  change.  In  which  last 
*  These  Gathic  passages  may  be  placed  at  about  700  to  900  b.c. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  1 7 

changing  Thou  shalt  come,  and  with  Thy  bounteous  Spirit, 
and  thy  sovereign  power  (see  also  Y.  XLIV.  19).' 

V.  Then  to  return  for  expansion  to  the  evil  element  in 
the  dualism,  we  have  again,  upon  the  other  hand,  the  more 
detailed  description  of  Satans  counter-activity  toward 
man.  While  criticism  casts  its  doubt  upon  the  presence  of 
Satan  in  the  serpent  of  Genesis,  we  gather  from  the  Genesis 
of  the  Avesta  that  the  Scriptural  reptile  may  well  be  recog- 
nised as  that  'old  Serpent,  the  Devil.'  A  serpent  tempts  in 
Genesis,  and  the  consequence  is  sin  and  the  expulsion  from 
Eden.  In  the  Vendldad,  the  Evil  Spirit*  opposes  every 
good  object  of  creation,  and  the  implied  consequence  is  an 
expulsion  ; — the  point  is  closer  here. 

Vendldad  I.  Ahura  Mazda  said  unto  Zarathushtra 
Spitama  : 

'  I,  O  Zarathushtra  Spitama,  made  the  first  best  place, 
which  is  Airyana  Vaejah, — thereupon  Aiigra  Mainyu  (the 
Evil  Spirit)  created  a  counter-creation,  a  serpent  in  the 
river,  and  frost  made  by  the  demons.  .  .  .  The  third 
place  which  I,  Ahura  Mazda,  made  the  best  was  Mouru  ; 
thereupon  Afigra  Mainyu  (the  Evil  Spirit)  created  a 
counter  creation,  which  was  backbiting  and  lust.  .  .  .  The 
fifth  place  which  I,  Ahura  Mazda,  made  the  best  was 
Nisaya  ;  thereupon,  in  opposition  to  it,  Afigra  Mainyu  (the 
Evil  Spirit),  full  of  death,  created  a  counter  creation,  which 
was  the  curse  of  unbelief.  ...  As  the  seventh  best  place 
I,  who  am  Ahura  Mazda,  created  Vaekereta  .  .  .  there- 
upon, in  opposition  to  it,  Aiigra  Mainyu  (the  Evil  Spirit), 
full  of  death,  created  the  evil  fairy  who  clave  to  Keresaspa. 
.  .  .  As  the  ninth  place,  I,  who  am  Ahura  Mazda,  created 
Khnefita  as  the  best  .  .  .  thereupon  Afigra  Mainyu  (the 
Evil  Spirit)  created  a  counter  creation,  the  inexpiable  deed 
of  Sodomy  f  .  .   .  etc' 

*  Though  hardly  Azhi  Dahaka,  who  was  nevertheless  a  serpent. 

i  About  500  to  300  B.C. ;  in  its  main  prior  elements  greatly  earlier ; 
but,  except  where  guarded  by  the  metre,  extraneous  matter  universally 
finds  its  way  in  places  into  ancient  texts ; — many  portions  of  the  later 
Avesta  must  have  been  repeatedly,  seldom  fatally,  written  over, 

2 


1 8  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

These  memorable  fragments  must  have  struck  the  atten- 
tion of  every  learned  Jewish  scribe  who  studied  the  Lore  of 
his  great  Persian  Protectors  ;— and  what  Zarathushtrian  who 
was  at  all  religiously  instructed  had  not  at  least  known  of 
these  items  in  their  earlier  form  ? — See  the  allusions  to  them 
swarming  everywhere. 

[a)  Then  the  Asmodeus  (Asmodai)  of  the  Book  of  Tobit 
(see  above)  is  positively  the  Aeshma-daeva  of  the  Avesta 
and  Aeshma  was  the  Wrath-demon  of  Invasion  contend- 
ing with  the  Seven  Spirits  in  the  Gathas,  as  he  did  with 
other  fell  aims  against  the  same  Seven  Spirits  in  Tobit 
(see  Y.  XXVIII.  7,  etc.  ; — see  above  and  below). 

{b)  A  '  fall  of  man '  is  included  in  the  successive  expulsions 
just  above  related,  but  we  have  also  in  the  original  Avesta, 
which  was  written  still  earlier  than  the  Vendidad,  a  fall  of 
man,  as  of  spiritual  beings,  distinctly  stated  (Y.  XXX.  3)  : — 
'  Thus  are  the  primaeval  Spirits  (see  above)  which,  as  a 
pair,  each  independent  in  his  actions,  have  been  famed  of 
old  (as  regards)  a  better  and  a  worse,  as  to  thought,  as  to 
word,  and  as  to  deed  ;  and  between  these  Two,  the  demons 
(or  'their  worshippers')  could  make  no  righteous  choice, 
since  theirs  (was)  deception  ; — as  they  were  questioning 
(in  their  hesitation)  the  Worst  Mind  approached  them  that 
he  might  be  chosen. — Thereupon  they  rushed  together 
unto  Aeshma,  the  Demon  of  Rapine,  that  they  might  pollute 
the  lives  of  mortals.' 

{c)  So  much  for  the  more  definitive,  and,  so  to  speak, 
*  applied,'  attributes  of  the  Evil  Deity,  the  '  God  of  This 
World!  The  fell  characteristics  here  manifested  are  not 
indeed  so  categorically  arranged  in  a  recognised  order  in 
the  Gathas,  nor  in  the  later,  but  still  genuine,  Avesta. 

The  'Good'  Immortal  Seven  are  so  constantly  presented 
together  in  those  productions  that  a  formal  correspond- 
ence in  antithesis  is  more  nearly  approximated  in  the  later 
Zoroastrianism,  yet  we  may  easily  trace  out  a  marked  and 
most  important  informal  grouping  of  the  opposed  intel- 
lectual   forces    even    in   the   Gathas.      As  Aiigra    Mainyu 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  19 

there  is  opposed  to  Ahura  Mazda,  the  One,  the  first,  being 
the  God  of  Heaven,  and  the  second  the  God  of  Hell, 
so  the  Druj  Lie -demon  of  the  Infidels  is  opposed  to 
Asha  (Arsha)  the  Truth  -  Law  everywhere  ; — the  Akem, 
evil,  (sometimes  called  Achishta= '  the  worst')  Mind  is 
opposed  to  Vohu  Manah,  the  Good  Mind,  at  times 
Vahishta,  'the  best.'  The  Dush-Khshathra  =  evil  Kings, 
are  opposed  to  Khshathra,  Archangel  of  the  Sovereign 
Authority ;  Taromaiti,  surpassing  insolence,  is  opposed  to 
Ar(a)maiti,  the  zealous  Piety  ;  while  Av(a)etat=  '  dejection,' 
etc.,  opposes  Hauravatat  the  Universal  Weal  of  Health 
and  of  Salvation,  and  Ameretatat,  the  deathless-long-life, 
here  and  hereafter,  is  opposed  everywhere  by  Merethyu, 
*  death,'  etc. 

VL  As  to  Soterioiogy,  a  virgin  conceives.  It  is  not  how- 
ever, to  produce  Zarathushtra,  but  the  restoring  Saviour  of 
the  latter  age  ; — nor  does  she  conceive  without  seed  although 
she  is  still  a  virgin.  She  conceives  from  the  seed  of 
Zarathushtra,  which  has  been  miraculously  preserved. 

The  details,  which  show  a  gross  deterioration  from 
Gathic  times,  are  presented  in  their  rounded  form  only  in  the 
Bundahish,  which  is  perhaps  as  much  as  a  thousand  years 
later  than  the  date  of  the  original  passages  in  the  genuine 
but  still  later  Avesta.  '  Zarathushtra  approached  his  wife 
Hvov  .  .  .  the  angel  Neryosangh  received  the  brilliance 
and  strength  of  that  seed,  and  delivered  it  with  care  to  the 
angel  Anahid,  and  in  time  it  will  blend  with  a  mother. 
Ninety-nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  myriads 
of  the  guardian  spirits  of  the  saints  are  intrusted  with  its 
protection'  (see  the  Bundahish.  vS.  B.  B.,  vol.  v.,  p.  144). 
It  is  preserved  in  the  Lake  Kasava  till,  at  the  end  of  the 
earthly  cycle,  a  maid  Eretat-fedhri,  bathing  in  the  lake, 
will  conceive  from  it,  and  bring  forth  the  last  Saoshyant, 
or  future  benefactor,  while  two  of  his  predecessors  are 
similarly  engendered.  These  several  items  are  likewise 
visible  in  a  scattered  state  in  the  ancient  but  still  com- 
paratively later  Avesta.     In  Yasht  XIII.  142,  we  read  : 


20  Oitr  Ozvn  Religion  211  Ancient  Persia. 

'  We  worship  the  guardian  spirit  of  the  holy  maid  Eretat- 
fedhri,  who  is  called  the  all-conquering,  for  she  will  bring 
him  forth  who  will  destroy  the  malice  of  the  demons  and 
of  men.'* 

While  in  Yasht  XIX.  92,  we  read  that — 

'  Astvat-ereta  (the  Saviour  of  the  Restoration)  will  arise 

from  the  waters  of  Kasava,  a  friend  of  Ahura  Mazda,  a  son 

of  Vispataurvairi,  the  all-conquering,  knowing  the  victorious 

knowledge    which    will    make    the    world    progress    unto 

perfection.' t 

And  in  Yasht  XIII.  62,  we  learn  that  many  myriads  of 

the  spirits  of  the  faithful  watch  over  the  seed  of  Zoroaster.  | 
[(That  we  have  here  the  hope  of  a  virgin-born  Redeemer 
admits  no  doubt.  Whether  such  intimations,  repeated 
under  various  forms,  came  from  the  hint  of  the  Israelitish 
prophets  or  vice  versa  is  of  course  a  question,  but  that 
Zoroastrian  or  Mazda-worshipping  Magi,  if  they  came  from 
the  East  to  do  honour  to  the  virgin-born  babe  of  Beth- 
lehem, were  familiar  with  them  is  certain.  And  as  they 
expected  a  virgin-born  Saviour  themselves,  it  is  but  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  this  pious  hope  may  well  have  lain 
at  the  foundation  of  their  divine  call  to  discover  him  who 
was  born  '  King  of  the  Jews.')] 

VII.  According  to  the  record,  evil  Powers  aroused 
themselves  at  the  birth  of  the  Semitic  Deliverer,  and  so 
at  Vendidad  XIX.,  43  we  have  : 

'  He  shouted,  and  shouted  forth  again,  he  Aiigra 
Mainyu,  the  evil  Spirit  who  is  full  of  death.  He  pondered, 
and  he  pondered  deeply,  the  demon  of  the  demons,  and  he 
thus  said,  he  who  was  the  evil-minded  Angra  Mainyu, 
"What!  will  the  demons  be  assembled  in  an  assembly  on 
the  top  of  Arezura,'^§  they  the  wicked,  evil-minded  T  .  .   . 

*   In  its  origin,  say  300-500  B.C.  (?),  or  greatly  earlier. 

t  In  its  origins,  at  about  300-500  B.C. ;  the  much  later  repetition  of 
this  myth  argues  its  long  previous  growth  through  centuries. 

I  Compare  this  drivel  with  the  grandeur  and  simplicity  of  the 
Gatha,  S.B.E.  XXXI.,  pp.  1-194. 

$  Recall  the  '  exceeding  high  mountain.' 


Our  Own  Relip;ion  in  Ancient  Persia.  21 


'i 


They  rushed  and  they  shouted,^  they,  the  demons,  wicked, 
evil-minded,  and  with  the  evil  eye  : — '  Let  us  assemble  in 
an  assembly  on  the  top  of  Arezura,  for  born  indeed  is  He 
who  is  the  holy  Zarathushtra  of  the  house  of  Pourushaspa. 
Where  shall  we  find  destruction  for  Him  ?— He  is  the 
demon's  wounder,— He  is  the  demon's  foe.*'  He  is  Druj  of 
the  Druj  (a  destroyer  of  the  destroyer).  Face  downward 
are  the  demon-worshippers,  prostrate  is- the  death-demon,^ 
and  down  is  the  DraoQ-ha  of  the  lie.'* 

{a)  Then  as  to  the  Temptation.— \{  owx  Lord  approached 
that  great  event  in  the  spirit  of  a  wide  humanity,  one  would 
surmise  that  he  felt  some  sympathy  with  sages  who  had 
gone  before  Him  in  similar  signal  encounters, — and  there 
exists  a  temptation  of  Zoroaster  of  which  He  may  have 
known  through  supernatural  cognition,  and  to  which  for 
colour  that  of  Hercules,  for  instance,  bears  no  comparison. 
The  myth  containing  it  doubtless  expresses  in  its  fragments 
what  was  once  a  real  struggle,  which,  if  it  in  any  sense  saved 
Zoroastrianism,  was  one  of  the  world's  crises.  Zoroaster  is 
besought  by  the  Evil  One  to  abjure  the  holy  Mazdayasnian 
religion,  and  to  obtain  a  reward  such  as  an  evil  ruler  got 
(Vend.  XIX.  I ).  A  rally  from  a  first  defeat  having  been 
made,  Angra  Mainyu,  the  evil  Spirit  coming  from  the 
'  north  region  of  the  North,'f  orders  the  Lie-demon  to  assault 
and  slay  the  holy  Zarathushtra,  now  no  longer  just  born, 
but  in  the  vigour  of  his  age.  The  demon,  again  discouraged, 
returns  to  Angra  Mainyu.      She  says  : 

'  O  baneful  Evil  Spirit,  I  see  no  death  for  him,  for 
glorious  is  the  holy  Zarathushtra.' J 

Zarathushtra  (seeing  through  their  thoughts,  says  within 
himself)  : 

'  The  Demons  plot  my  death,  they,  evil-doing  as  they  are.' 

*  In  its  origin,  say  about  300  or  greatly  earlier  (?).  The  foot-note 
signs  expressed  in  letters  refer  in  each  case  to  the  corresponding 
analogy  ;  see  the  note  below,  p.  23  ;  (recall,  '  cried  with  a  loud  voice '). 

t  An  accursed  quarter. 

X   Recall :   '  I  know  Thee  who  Thou  art,  the  Holy  One  of  God.' 


2  2  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Then  Angra  Mainyu  again  heads  the  throng. 

'  He  (Z.)  arose,  he  went  forth  uninjured  ^  by  their  plan 
and  the  hardness  of  their  words.  And  Zarathushtra  let 
the  Evil  Spirit  know  :— 

'  O  evil-minded  Angra  Mainyu,  I  will  smite  the  creation 
made  by  demons  ;  I  will  smite  the  Nasu  (putrid  demon)  ; 
I  will  smite  the  evil  fairy  (that  seduced  the  early  sages), 
till  the  Saviour  is  born  victorious  from  the  waters  of  Kasava, 
from  the  utmost  region  of  the  East.*— 

And  Angra  Mainyu  answered,  shouting  as  he  spoke  : — 

'  Slay  not  my  creatures,^  holy  Zarathushtra.  Thou  art 
Pourushaspa's  son,  for  from  thy  birth  have  I  invoked  (thee).*' t 
Renounce  the  good  religion  of  those  who  worship  Mazda.' 
Obtain    the    rewardJ    which    Vadhaghan,    the    murderous 

(ruler),  gained.'— 

And  Zarathushtra  answered  : 

'Never  shall  I  abjure  the  good  faith^  of  those  who  worship 
Mazda  :  (no),  let  not  my  body,  nor  my  life,!  "^^  "^Y  senses 
fly  apart.'— 

And  to  him  then  shouted  the  Evil  Spirit  of  the  evil  world  : 

With  whose  word  wilt  thou  thus  conquer  ?— With  whose 
word  will  thou  abjure  ?  With  what  weapon  as  the  best 
formed  wilt  thou  conquer  these  my  creatures  ?- 

And  Zarathushtra  answered  :— 

'With  the  sacred  Haoma  plant,  with  the  mortar,  and 
the  cup,  with  the  word  which  God  pronounced.*  With  these 
my  weapons  (will  I  slay  thee),  they  are  best.  With  that 
word  shall  I  be  victor,  with  that  word  shall  I  expel  thee,°' 
with  this  weapon  §  as  the  best  made,  O  evil  Angra  Mainyu. 
The  most  bounteous  Spirit  forged  it'^ ;  in  boundless  time  He 
made  it ;— and  the  Bountiful  Immortals  gave  it,  they  who 
rule  aright,  who  dispose  (of  all)  aright.' 

*  A  blessed  quarter. 

t  First  aorist  mid.     '  All  these  things  will  I  give  thee.' 
X    Other  translators  introduce  an   'if  to  gain  a   better  meaning 
'  Not  if  my  body,  nor  my  life,  nor  my  senses  fly  apart.' 
§   Recall  '  the  sword  of  the  Spirit.' 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  25 

And  Zarathushtra  chanted  :— 

'  As  the  higher  priest  is  to  (be  revered  and)  chosen,  so 
let  the  lower  chief  (be  one  who  serves)  from  the  righteous 
order,  a  creator  of  mental  goodness,  and  of  life's  actions 
done  for  Mazda,  and  the  kingdom  °  is  to  Ahura,  which  to 
the  poor  may  give  their  nurture.'*— 

Here  we  may  well  introduce  the  closing  verse  of  the 
chapter  (XIX.  147)  :  f— 

'  The  demons  shouted,  the  demons  rushed,  the  evil- 
doing  and  the  wicked  ;  they  rushed  and  they  fled  to  the 
bottom  of  the  place  of  darkness  ;  that  is,  of  frightful  Hell.'P 

Few  Medo-Persian  subjects  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem 
being  presumably  Mazda-worshippers,  like  their  Emperors, 
here  lingering  in  the  Persian  subject  city  soon  after,  or 
long  after  the  Return,  could  have  failed  to  know  this 
striking  myth  probably  in  a  much  fuller  form  ;— and  none 
who  knew  it  could  have  failed  to  tell  it,  if  creeds  were  at 
all  discussed. 

VIII.  We  can  now  trace  the  records  of  the  soul's  indi- 
vidttal  experiences  in  its  salvation,  and  here  the  astonishing 
subjectivity  of  the  system  comes  once  more  fully  out.  In 
Vend.  XIX.  7,0,  the  soul  is  met  on  its  arrival  after  death  at 
the  Chinvat,  or  Judge's,  Bridge  by  a  female  form  accom- 
panied with  dogs,;}:  and  in  Yasht  XXII.  we  learn  who  this 
female  was.    It  was  none  other  than  the  believer's  conscience. 

*  The  texts  cited  are  all  of  them  metrical,  from  this  the  rhythm  of 
the  renderings. 

t  For  detailed  analogies  in  the  above  citations,  which  are  not  very 
close,  recall  perhaps  '^"  the  exceeding  high  mountain  ';  •''"  cried  with  a 
loud  voice,  My  name  is  Legion,  for  we  are  many  ';  '"''  Art  thou  come 
hither  to  destroy  us  before  the  time  ?'  ''^'^  Death  and  Hell  shall  be  cast 
into  the  lake  that  burneth  ';  "=' '  The  Holy  One  ';  "^'  was  led  up  into  the 
wilderness  to  be  tempted  of  the  devil';  's)«And  the  devils  besought 
Him,'  etc. ;  •'^"  I  know  Thee  who  Thou  art';  ""  All  these  things  will  I 
give  Thee  if  Thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me  ';  'J"  I  will  give  Thee 
this  authority';  "'"Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God';  ""It  is 
written';  <'°"  Get  thee  hence';  '"''The  sword  of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the 
word  of  God ';  '°"  him  only  shalt  thou  serve ';  "'"Then  the  devil  leaveth 
Him ';  '  into  the  abyss.' 

X  Related  to  Cerberus  (?). 


24  Our  Oiun  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

The  figure  presents  the  typical  features  of  female  attractive- 
ness ;-she  is  beautiful,  she  is  noble,  and  in  the  flower  of  her 
youth.-' What  maiden  art  thou,'  he  asks  her,  '  who  art  the 
most  beautiful  of  maidens  that  ever  I  have  seen  ?— And  she, 
who  is  his  conscience,*  answers  :    '  I  am  verily,   O  youth, 
thy  conscience,  thy  good  thoughts,  and  words,  and  deeds, 
thy  very  own.'    But  he  asks  her  :— '  Who  hath  desired  thee 
hither  with  his  love,  coming  with  thy  majesty,  thy  goodness, 
and  thy  beauty,  triumphant  and  an  enemy  of  grief?'     And 
she  answers  : — 'Thou  hast  loved  me  and  desired  met  hither, 
O  youth,  even  thy  good  thoughts,  and  words,  and  deeds. 
For  when  thou  sawest  idol-worship  .  .   .   thou  didst  desist, 
chanting   the  Gathas,   and  sacrificing  to  the  good   waters 
and  to  Ahura- Mazda's  fire,  contenting  J  the  righteous  saint 
who  came  to  thee  from  near  and  from  afar.— It  is  thus  that 
thou  hast  made  me,  who  am  lovely,  still  more  lovely,  and 
me  who  am  beautiful  hast  thou  made  still  more  beautiful, 
and    thou    hast    made    me    who    am    beatified    still    more 
beatified  .  .   .   through  thy  good  thoughts,  and  words,  and 
deeds,'      (Here    we    may    observe,    in    passing,   the    same 
element  of  pleased  surprise  which  we  have  in  the  sublimer 
Matthew  XXV.  z^]  \  the  soul  is  incredulous:   'When  saw 
we  Thee  a  hungered  and  fed  Thee  ?',— and  the  answer  is, 
'  Thou  hast  fed  and  lodged  Me  ;'  so  here  there  is  surprise  : 
'  Who  hath  desired  thee  hither  with  his  love  ?'     And  the 
answer  is:  'Thou  hast;— for  thou  didst  content  the  righteous 
man    coming    from    near   and    from    afar.')      As   the   soul 
proceeds  further,  it  passes  the  Judge's  Bridge  and  comes 
before  the  golden  throne,  where  the  Good  Mind  is  seated  § 
(Vend.   XIX.   31).      He   rises    to    meet    it,   and   welcomes 
it:    'When  didst   thou   come  hither   from   that   perishable 
world    to    this   imperishable  world  ?';-and    the   saints  who 

*  Some  writers  render,  the  believer's  '  soul ';  others,  the  believer's 
self,'  so  varying  the  identical  idea, 
t  '  Invited  me.' 

\  The  later  Zoroastrianism  explains  '  lodged  and  entertained.' 
§  Recall  the  '  Son  of  Man  ' ;— V.M.  also  equalled  '  the  good  man.' 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  25 

have  passed  away  before  him  ask  him  the  same  : — '  How 
long  was  thy  salvation  ?'  Then  said  Ahura  Mazda  :  *  Ask 
him  not  what  thou  asketh  of  that  cruel  way  which  is 
the  dividing-  of  the  soul  and  body'  (Yasht  XXII.). -And 
the  first  step,  as  he  advances,  places  him  in  the  entrance  of 
the  three-fold  Heaven,  which  is  again  the  Good  Thought, 
and  the  second  step  places  him  in  the  Good  Word,  and 
the  third  in  the  Good  Deed. — Then  the  soul  passes  on 
contented  to  the  souls  of  the  saints,  to  the  golden  throne 
of  Ahura  Mazda,  and  to  the  golden  thrones  of  the  Bounti- 
ful Immortals,  and  to  the  abode  of  Sublimity  (or  'Song'), 
even  to  the  home  of  Ahura  Mazda  and  His  blest*  (Vend. 
XIX.  ^iZ)-  ^  corresponding  evil  spirit  awaits  the  wicked  ; 
a  hideous  female  is  his  conscience, — the  wicked  and  Angra 
Mainyu  mock  him,  and  he  rushes  at  last  into  the  Hell  of 
evil  thoughts,  and  words,  and  deeds. j" 

IX.  Corporeal  resurrection  seems  to  be  placed  after  the 
reception  of  souls  into  Heaven  as  if  they  returned  later 
to  a  purified  earth.J 

As  to  this  doctrine, — which  is,  properly  speaking, 
not  identical  with  that  of  '  immortality,'  but  which  may 
be  said  to  be  closely  associated  with  it, — aside  from 
the  constant  implication  of  it  throughout,  we  have  in 
Fragment  IV.,  '  Let  Angra  Mainyu,  the  evil  spirit,  be  hid 
beneath  the  earth, — let  the  Daevas  disappear,  let  the  dead 
arise,  and  let  bodily  life  be  sustained  in  these  now  lifeless 
bodies.'  And,  in  Yasht  XIX.  ^2)^  we  have  resurrection 
together  with  millennial  perfections: — 'We  sacrifice  unto 
the  Kingly  Glory  which  shall  cleave  unto  the  victorious 
Saoshyant  and  His  companions,  when  He  shall  make  the 
world  progress  unto  perfection,  and  when  it  shall  be  never 
dying,  not  decaying,  never  rotting,  ever  living,  ever  useful, 

*  About  300  B.C.,  in  its  origins  at  least,  probably  greatly  earlier, 
f  A  perhaps  misunderstood  echo  of  this  would  be  Rev.  xxii.  11  : 

'  He  that  is  unrighteous,  let  him  be  unrighteous  still  :— and  he  that  is 

filthy,  let  him  be  filthy  still.' 

\   Recall  the  same  uncertainty  among  Christians  as  to  the  detail  of 

their  future  beatification. 


26  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

having  power  to  fulfil  all  wishes,  when  the  dead  shall  arise, 
and  immortal  life  shall  come,  when  the  settlements  shall 
all  be  deathless.'  Contrast  this  with  the  earlier  Scriptural 
passages,  void  as  they  are  of  any  genuine  statement  of  this 
important  dogma  ;— compare  these,  then,  with  statements 
which  appear  after  the  return  from  the  Captivity,  a  captivity 
during  which  the  tribes  had  come  into  intimate  contact 
with  a  great  religion*  in  which  the  passages  cited  express 
predominant  convictions  ;— what  do  we  find  in  them  ? 
First,  we  have  the  jubilant  hope  expressed  by  the  later 
Isaiah:  'Let  thy  dead  live,  let  my  dead  body  arise; — 
Awake  and  sing,  ye  that  dwell  in  the  dust ;  for  thy  dew  is 
as  the  dew  of  herbs,  and  the  earth  shall  cast  forth  the 
shades.'  And  then  the  full  statement  in  Daniel :  '  And 
many  of  them  that  sleep  in  the  dust  of  the  earth  shall 
awake,  some  to  everlasting  life,  and  some  to  shame  and 
everlasting  contempt.'— And  yet  God's  people,  as  we 
have  seen  above,  had  by  no  means  universally  accepted 
the  meaning  of  this  language  even  at  the  time  of  Christ. 
We  draw  the  inference — the  religion  of  the  Jews  was 
originally  Sadducaic.^ 

X.  Such  then  are  the  historical  literary  facts, — uncon- 
tested for  the  most  part,  the  great  mass  of  them  (see  above), 
and  also  incontestable  ; — and  this,  whatsoever  may  be  their 
possible  or  impossible,  exterior  historical  connection  or 
disconnection  with  the  Hebrew  theology,  or  with  our  own. 
The  points  deduced  from  them  clearly  show  that  they 
contain  the  very  most  essential  elements  of  'our  own 
religion '  in  its  advanced,  if  still  formative,  condition,  from 
the  date  of  the  Captivity,  or  before  the  time  of  Christ,  and 
after  the  Restoration  from  the  Exile.  [(—Let  us  now 
for  convenience  compactly  collect  the  points  made  in  the 
above  copious  citations.  First  of  all  there  was  God's  unity 
as  the  greatest  of  the  deities  and  with  a  name  far  more 
appropriate  than  our  own  for  Him.— He  has  the  Attributes 

-  Within  a  vast  Empire  in  which  they  had  become  citizens, 
t  Sadducees  before  Zadok. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  27 

of  Justice,  Benevolence,  Authority,  Inspiring  Energy 
(compare  the  Holy  Spirit),  Universal  Weal  and  Eternity. 
There  were  these  latter  at  times  personified  as  Archangels  : 
so,  rhetorically  or  otherwise  ; — there  was  His  'creationism ' 
of  '  this  world  and  yon  Heaven,'  as  of  man,  with  optimistic 
aims  and  results,  no  evil  appearing  as  His  product,  and  of 
the  other  Gods  and  Archangels,  these  last  having  been  at 
first  His  Attributes  ;-there  was  a  human  Immortality  also 
certified  as  to  the  eternity  of  its  duration  by  the  application 
of  the  word  '  Amesha '  in  the  next  oldest  portion  of  the 
Avesta  to  the  'Immortal'  Archangels,  'amesha'  being  an 
adjective  to  Ameretatat.— There  was  a  dominant  subjective 
susceptibility  in  all  the  three  personified  better  elements, 
God,  the  Archangels,  and  sanctified  man,  extending  to 
thought,  word,  and  deed.— 

There  was  a  Demonology  with  the  most  pronounced 
Satan  of  all  literature,  a  very  '  God  of  this  world '  as 
against  the  '  God  of  Heaven.'  He  has  his  evil  Attributes 
in  antithesis  to  the  beneficial  ones  of  Ahura  Mazda.  One 
of  them  is  positively  personified  in  the  Gathas,  and  perhaps 
two  of  them  ; — there  is  a  fall  of  man  as  of  other  spiritual 
beings  from  successive  Edens  through  his,  Angra  Mainyu's, 
malign  influence.— 

There  was  to  be  a  judgment  personal  and  universal, 
discriminating  thoughts,  words,  and  deeds,  with  an  approval 
experienced  in  the  saved  man's  soul,  and  Continued  as  a 
recompense,— and  also  a  future  Heaven  itself  partly  con- 
sisting in  the  person's  own  good  thoughts,  and  words,  and 
deeds,  but  with  various  additional  particulars  of  beatifica- 
tion. Millennial  periods  of  intermitting  righteous  felicity 
here  intervene,  with  a  final  restoration  upon  a  renewed 
and  supernaturally  beatified  earth.  This  latter  seems  to 
take  place  as  a  sequel  to  the  first  beatific  reception  of 
the  soul  in  Heaven,  a  resurrection  being  an  essential 
element  in  this  restoration,  while  the  entire  redemption 
is  brought  about  by  a  Virgin  -  born  Beatifier.  (—There 
may    be    some    possibility  of  a    '  sevenfold '    gradation    of 


28  Oiir  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

felicity,   in  connection  with   the   Seven   Karshvars  of  the 
Earth,  or  with  the  Seven  Spirits)  ;— For  the  evil,  a  corres- 
ponding Hell  exists  in  equal  grade.— These  are,  as  I   need 
hardly  repeat,  the  vital  essentials  of  '  our  own  religion  '  as  it 
existed  in  its  earlier  stages  in  the  Exilic  period  during  and 
after   the    Captivity    and    before    Christ,    being    conspicu- 
ously manifested  in  the  orthodox   Pharisaism,  while  these 
elements   existed   in  the  Persian  documents  for  unknown 
previous  ages; — see  also  the  Veda  at  places.* — )]     {a)  It 
can    now    be   fully  seen    why    I    used    the  expressions  in 
the  title  to  these    lectures.     Contrary,  however,  to  many 
acute  and  sincere  searchers,  I  hold  that  the  two  forms  of 
this  same  religion  were  originally  each  of  separate  origin — 
see  again  above  and  below,— each  being  a  regularly  spon- 
taneous and  parallel  development  from  unchanging  universal 
laws,   proving   the   original    man-unity,   and   strongly   sup- 
porting   the   view  that   it   was   impossible  to   prevent   the 
origin    and    development   of  similar   ideas,    entirely    aside 
from  all  borrowing  of  them  from  one   nation  to   another. 
[b)   But    while    I     hold     that     these     views    arose    from 
'parallel   development'    having   been   caused    by   the   dis- 
astrous afflictions  of  the  Captivity,  I  lay  no  illogical  straw 
in  the  way  of  those  who  hold  to  the  view  that  the  doctrines 
were,   under  God,   taught    directly  to   the    Jews    by    their 
protectors.      In  fact,  I  would  strenuously  repeat,  and  with 
emphasis,  what   I   wrote  in   1894— viz.,   the  principle,  that 
any,  or  all  of  the  historical,  doctrinal,  or  hortative  state- 
ments recorded  in  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament  might, 
while   fervendy    believed    to    be    inspired    by    the    Divine 
Power,  be  yet  freely  traced,  if  the  facts  would  allow  of  it, 
to  other  religious  systems  for  their  mere  mental  initiative, 
— that  the  historical  origin  of  particular  doctrines  or  ideas 
which  are  expressed  in  the   Old   or  the^  New  Testament 
does  not  touch  the  question   of  their  inspiration,  plenary 
or  otherwise— (^)  [(That,  for  instance  and  to  illustrate,  as 
St.  Paul  freely  discloses  his  mental  peculiarities,  and  (as  to 

*  Further  citations  on  the  contents  of  the  Vedas  are  given  later  in 
the  lecture  bv  the  author  upon  '  The  Avesta  and  the  Veda.' 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  29 

citations)  quotes  a  poet  of  his  youth,  so  our  Lord  Himself 
also  reveals  a  mental  constitution,  and  to  a  certain  degree 
expressed,  as  all  others  express  them,  the  convictions  and 
enthusiasms  which  he  has  absorbed  from  earlier  associa- 
tions. And  still  more  than  this,  unless  we  are  prepared  to 
accede  to  a  docetic  heresy  doubting  the  very  reality  of 
our  Saviour's  human  nature,  every  sentiment  of  veneration 
ought  to  induce  us  to  trace,  if  it  be  possible  to  trace  them, 
not  only  the  fountain-heads  of  His  human  convictions,  but 
the  supplying  rills  of  His  expression.  (—If  we  carefully 
study  the  genealogy  of  His  body,  with  how  much  greater 
earnestness  should  we  examine  that  of  His  mind.—)  For  it 
was  His  thoughts,  humanly  speaking,  and  sometimes  His 
earlier  ones,  which  not  only  constituted  a  part  of  His 
momentous  history,  but  actually  determined  His  career. 
In  the  source  of  His  thoughts,  therefore,  the  great 
motives  of  His  subsequent  history  are  to  be  sought. 
{d)  Recall,  for  instance,  what  I  also  have  just  alluded 
to  above  *  in  the  citations  as  to  the  recorded  temptation 
of  the  Persian  Saint : — as  He  was  gathering  up  his  re- 
solves for  such  a  mental  scene  as  that  described  in  the 
fourth  chapter  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel ;  see  above,*  in 
which  He  purposed  to  meet  in  one  decisive  encounter  a 
spiritual  power  which,  as  He  believed,  was  threatening 
His  creation,  as  there  had  been  something  memorable 
of  a  similar  kind  in  the  experiences  of  prophets  of  kindred 
religions,  and  if  these  were  known  to  Him,  as  I  have 
suggested,  through  His  omniscience, t  it  does  not  seem  to 
me  to  be  at  all  deniable  that  such  preceding  *  temptations  ' 
(as  He  revolved  them,  with  all  that  they  signified)  in- 
fluenced Him, — if  He  possessed  that  larger  intellect  which 
could  see  over  the  trivial  paraphernalia  of  superstition,  and 
look  at  the  soul  struggling  in  its  sincerity  for  spiritual  life, 
and  for  the  spiritual  lives  of  many  who  revered  it,  then 
the  humblest  of  His  forerunners  must  have  led  Jiim  on.. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  to  be  a  very  pious  act  to  search, 

*  Page  21. 

t  See  the  Talmud  article  by  Dr.  Deutsch  (Remains,  1874). 


30  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

diligently  for  everything  which  Christ  hallowed  by  His 
reverence,  and  it  would  seem  a  very  mistaken  religious 
sentiment  which  would  arrest  one  in  such  a  course.)] 

Reflections. 
I  The    most    obvious    place    to    search    for    the    doc- 

trines  and  opinions  amid  which  our  Lord  grew  up,  has 
been,  as  of  course,  the  Jewish  literature  of  His  period,  and 
of  that  which  preceded  His  appearance  ; — this  has  been 
examined  to  a  considerable  extent,  and  much  of  the  greatest 
interest  has  been  brought  to  light ;— the  theologies  of 
Babylon  and  Egypt  should  be  also  searched  as  well  as 
those  of  Greece  and  Rome.  From  India  we  have  what 
seem  a  throng  of  rich  analogies  from  the  Buddhist 
Scriptures,  but  our  highest  authorities  upon  the  subject 
are,  or  were,  inclined  to  doubt  the  possibility  of  the 
historical  connection  ;  there  remains  then  this  ancient 
Persian  theology,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  an  effective 
historical  connection  amounts,  at  one  stage  of  it  at  least, 
to  historical  identity, — and  it  is  as  such,  I  believe,  uni- 
versally recognised.  Cyrus  took  Babylon,  say,  about  the 
year  539  B.C.,  and  with  it  the  Jewish  slave  colony, 
whose  tribes  continued  to  be  Persian  subjects  till  the 
Ach^emenian  power  broke.  Jeremiah,  foreseeing  this 
future  invasion  of  the  dominant  and  resdess  Aryan,  voiced 
his  anathemas  against  his  Semitic  Babylonian  oppressors 
in  view  of  it ; — the  '  Kings  of  the  Medes '  were  to  avenge 
him,  and  in  due  course  they  did  so,  and  later  sent  the 
Jewish  people  back  from  their  Captivity,  rebuilding  the 
Holy  City  when  it  had  become  an  '  heap,'  decreeing 
also  the  restoration  of  the  Temple.  The  later  Isaiah 
speaks  in  most  astonishing  terms  of  this  Restorer  ; — the 
Book  of  Nehemiah  discloses  further  scenes  with  Persian 
monarchs ; — section  after  section  of  the  Bible  dates  from 
their    reigns,    while    Magian*    priests,    who    were    of   the 

*  The  word  '  Magian '  is  with  little  doubt  Avestic  ;  the  Maga  was 
•the  Holy  Cause,'  occurring  repeatedly  in  the  Gathas ;  the  changed 
suffix  ;(  in  Magn  is  of  no  importance,  and  the  0  of  the  Avestic  moghu 


Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  31 

religion  of  Cyrus,  came  later  to  do  honour  to  the  Son  of  \ 
Mary,  and  one  of  the  last  words  uttered  by  Christ  upon  the 
Cross  was  in  the  Persian  tongue.-  [( — The  fact  that  Cyrus 
may  have  coquetted  politically  with  the  Babylonian  priest- 
hood, if  it  be  a  fact,  is  one  which  redounds  somewhat  to 
his  credit  and  corroborates  our  argument.  How  much 
better  that  he  should  show  some  respect  to  the  religion  of 
his  fallen  enemies,  who  now  became  fully  acquiescent  in 
their  submission,  than  to  crush  them  all  wholesale  with  the 
usual  slaughter.  Were  it  even  true  that  he  was  accurately 
depicted  upon  a  stele  as  present  at  the  worship  of  one  of 
their  chief  deities,  this  would  be  but  one  proof  the  more  of  his 
considerate  courtesy.      He  did  not  conquer  to  annihilate. 

Whether  the  precise  form  of  Mazda- worship  now  upon 
the  Inscriptions  was  that  of  Zoroaster  exactly  or  not  is 
just  at  this  point  of  our  inquiries  again  a  question  which 
we  need  only  glance  at,  as  it  is  of  little  moment. f  It  seems 
likely,  indeed,  that  it  was  an  especially  original  form  of 
Mazda-worship  remaining  undeveloped  in  an  original  sim- 
plicity, while  elsewhere  throughout  Media  and  South  Persia 
the  particulars  of  the  general  creed  advanced  till  they 
became  identified  with  those  of  the  Zoroaster  of  Plutarch. 
But  whether  this  were  the  fact  or  not,  it  must  have  pos- 
sessed the  main  features  which  have  been  more  or  less 
exactly  preserved  to  us  in  the  Zend  Avesta. — )]     Further. 

The  word  Mazda  (perhaps  -ddh),  meaning  '  the  Great 
Creator,'  or  'the  Wise  One,'  is,  as  said  above,  with 
Ahura,  the  Life-spirit-lord,  an  especially  well-adapted 
name    for    God,    much    more    so    than    a    name    derived 


results  from  epenthesis  ;  cf.  vohu  for  vahu,  Sk.  vasu  ;  gh  also=Gathic  g. 
Maga,  as  being  pre-Gathic  by  centuries,  may  have  been  carried  down  to 
Akkad  by  Turanians;  cf.  Y.  46,  12.  Some  writers  have,  I  believe, 
assumed  that  the  expression  rab  mag  in  Jeremiah  could  not  have 
originated  from  across  the  border  ;  that  it  was  purely  Semitic ; — but  no 
one  doubts  that  the  Magi  of  the  Gospels  were  Aryan  and  Persian. 
And  they  naturally  came  into  once-Persian  Judaea.  Here  is  the  same 
-word  as  mag  beyond  all  doubt  non-Semitic:  the  viag  of  rab  mag  may 
well  be  one  of  the  hundred  odd  Persian  words  in  our  Semitic  Bible. 

■''  Luke  xxiii.  43.     I^a.ra.dise  =  Av.  paivi-d{a)eza. 

t  See  my  remark  in  Vol.  XXXI.,  S.B.E.,  Introduction,  p.  30. 


32  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancie^it  Persia. 

from  a  Healhen  Deity,  it  being  the  name  used  for  Him  by 
that  great  Mazda-worshipper,  who,  under  the  providence  of 
Go5,  determined  the  entire  later  history  of  the  Jewish  people. 
For  had  Cyrus,  the  Mazda-worshipper,  not  brought  the 
people  back,  the  later  prophets  might  not  have  spoken 
at  Jerusalem,  nor  might  Jesus  have  been  born  at  Bethlehem, 
nor  taught  in  the  region.  Indeed,  the  influence  of  the 
Great  Restorer  and  his  successors  over  the  city  was  so 
positive  that  in  the  opinion  of  some  writers  Jerusalem  was 
for  a  considerable  period  after  the  Return  in  many  respects 
almost  'a  Persian  city.'* 

*  The  Age  of  the  Gathas. — I  have  omitted  to  place  the  present 
note  under  the  text,  not  wishing  to  accumulate  too  much  of  such 
matter  at  the  foot  of  the  pages. 

My  argument  for  the  age  of  the  Gathas  has  been  very  carefully 
thought  out.  First,  any  verbal  statement  within  the  Hymns  them- 
selves directly  mentioning  their  age  would  be  regarded  by  me  as  a 
mere  curiosity  aside  from  internal  evidence ; — it  is  what  the  documents 
reveal  of  themselves,  as  it  were,  in  passing  and  without  intention,  which 
alone  possesses  validity  in  my  eyes. 

Secondly ,—?iS  to  this  internal  evidence.— Are  the  Gathas  the  produc- 
tions of  a  person  or  persons  living  amid  the  actual  scenes  to  which  they 
unconsciously  allude  ?     If  they  did  so  allude  to  interests  which  were 
real,  immediate,  and  vital,  the  Hymns  must  have  been  composed  in  a 
language  generally  spoken  as  vernacular  at  the  time.   Reasons  : — -first  (a),  they 
are  tivice  formally  addressed  to  assemblies  '  coming  from  near  and  from 
far  '  (see  Y.  XXX.,  i,  and  Y.  XLV.,  i ) ;  secondly  {h\  they  dMude pointedly 
in  the  first,    second,    and    third   personals   to  persons   immediately   and^ 
vitally  involved  in  the  religions-political  situation  of  which  the  Hymns  are 
the  expression  (see  Y.  XXVHL,  8,  '  to  Vishtaspa  and  to  me,'  '  to  Frasha- 
oshtra  and  to  me ';— see  even  a  vocative  in  Y.  XLVL,  15,16);  while  their 
whole  tone,  so  personal  and  at  times  impassioned,  clearly  precludes  the 
hypothesis  of  a  '  dead  language  '  in  a  scene  so  rudimental  and  in  a 
climate  so  severe  as  Iran,  where  energies  would  be  directed  rather  to 
the  necessities  of  life  than  to   a  hyper-artificial  literature  of  such  a 
character  as  would  use  a  dead  language  for  a  careful  imitation.     Even 
in  swarming  India  a  fabricated  structure  exactly  of  such  a  type  as  the 
Gathas  would  be  if  artificially  composed,  is  really  unheard  of.     There 
was  nothing  there  like  such  a  supposed  worked-up  romance.     Sanskrit 
when  a  dead  language  was,  indeed,  widely  used  ;  but  never  in  close 
fraudulent  imitation  of  a  personal   crisis.     It  would   have  demanded 
inimitable  art  to  imagine  and  fabricate  such  a  forgery.     If,  then,  the 
Author  or  Authors  of  the  Gathas  used  a  language  familiarly  spoken  at 
the  time,  we  know  at  once  when  they  used  it.     For,  thirdly,  no  one 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  2iZ 

doubts  the  date  of  the  Achaemenian  Inscriptions,  nor  that  the  language 
in  which  they  were  sculptured  was  that  spoken  by  Darius  and  the 
Persians  of  his  day  and  neighbourhood  ;— and  this  language  is  well 
preserved  on  the  mountain  rocks  ; — but  upon  comparing  it  with  the 
Gathic  we  see  that  it  appears  in  a  form  much  degenerated  from  it. 
Two  hundred  years,  say,  more  or  less,  are  needed  as  time  to  account 
for  the  change  ;  for  that  change  was  almost  as  great  as  that  from 
Anglo-Saxon  to  Elizabethan  English.  If,  then,  the  Gathic  language  was 
in  vernacular  use  at  the  time  at  which  the  Gathas  were  written,  and  that 
vernacular  could  not  have  prevailed  at  Behistun  later  than  200  years 
(about)  before  Darius  had  his  Inscriptions  chiselled,  we  have  at  once 
the  latest  date  at  which  the  Gathas  could  have  been  produced,  say 
700  B.C. 

To  suppose  them  written  in  a  vernacular  near  the  time  of  Christ  is 
therefore  wholly  absurd,  for  the  Gathic  language  had  been  dead  for 
centuries,  Pahlavi  having  taken  its  place ;— and  to  regard  them  as  having 
been  written  in  a  dead  language  preserved  among  the  priests  is  likewise 
excluded  by  the  nature  of  the  compositions  ;-see  above.  The  language 
must,  indeed,  have  lingered  amid  the  priestly  schools  as  Sanskrit  and 
Latin  did,  and  much  later  Avesta  must  have  been  written  or  rewritten 
in  it.  For  such  matter  as  we  have  throughout  the  later  Avesta  would 
be  naturally  reproduced  from  time  to  time  amid  the  priestly  schools 
written  over  in  the  then  'dead  language';  cp.  again  the  Sanskrit 
literature.  Yet  the  intense  '  personality,'  so  to  express  it,  of  the  Gathas 
could  hardly  have  been  so  radically  reconstructed,  much  less  fraudu- 
lently originated,  with  the  metres,  had  he  even  so  much  desired  it, 
by  anyone  living  at  the  time  of  Christ ;— [(such  an  hypocrisy  would 
imply  an  advanced  cynicism  incredible  in  the  circumstances)] . 

Pious  fraud  of  the  type  indicated  would  have  also  no  visible 
motive  ; — and  without  such  an  artificial  misrepresentation  intentionally 
practised,  the  authorship  of  the  Gathas  at  about  the  time  of  Christ  is 
unthinkable.  Even  if  the  allusions  to  the  Gathas  which  occur  in  the 
other  books  may  have  been,  some  of  them,  later  inserted  and  in- 
corporated with  them,  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they  pointedly  sug- 
gest a  very  early  date  for  them ; — while  the  full  view  that  the  Gathas 
were  genuinely  composed  at  the  time  of  Christ  by  a  then  living  Zara- 
thushtra  of  a  then  living  Frashaoshtra  and  Jamaspa,  etc.,  needs 
hardly  to  be  considered;  see  above; — no  living  poem  composed  in  a 
contemporaneous  national  crisis  could  have  been  popularly  spoken  in 
an  unknown  tongue.  And  as  to  the  pevsonality  of  Zarathushtra, — not 
only  is  it  irresistibly  implied  in  every  allusion  to  the  Persian  reHgion 
from  Herodotus  down,  but  we  have  Zarathushtra  mentioned  by  Plutarch 
as  if  his  name  were  positively  familiar  to  Theopompus,  circa  350  b.c. 

To  sum  up :  the  Gathas  could  not  have  been  written  in  a  vernacular 
tongue  later  than  700  b.c,  and  they  may  have  been  written  much  earlier; 
— and  they  could  not  have  been  written  in  the  '  dead  language  '  at  all. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  LECTURE  TO  THE  FIRST 

[{Fearing  to  include  too  many  points  in  summing  up» 
I  have  separated  some  remarks  which  originally  appeared 
in  the  main  body  of  the  First  Lecture,  but  which  may  yet 
be  useful.  Should  this  Lecture  be  read  publicly  in  Bombay, 
where  that  much-appreciated  honour  has  already  been  con- 
ferred upon  some  of  my  well-meant  productions,*  the  main 
points  of  the  previous  Lecture  should  be  here  recapitu- 
lated. )] 

Many  indeed  have  been  the  erroneous  statements 
made  by  well-meaning  tyros  in  Christian  pulpits,  as  by  my- 
self too,  once  among  them,  with  regard  to  the  '  impossibility  ' 
of  all   later  connections  between  our  great  doctrines  and 
analogous  truths  once  held  by  nations  foreign  to  the  Jews 
who   may    yet   have    been   brought   into    connection    with 
them  ;    and  the  fervent  novice  may   well  be   pardoned   if, 
in  his  first  sincere  efforts,  he  is  too  decided  in  a  negative 
sense  ;  but  In  men  of  maturer  years  let  us  hope  for  better 
things.      For    surely — to    be    sentimental,    if    only    for   a 
moment,  —  the    first    object    of    religion    next    after    the 
suppression   of  unlawful  violence  or  appropriation  should 
be   the  suppression  of  inaccurate  statement,  and  to  deny 
without    any    effort    to    become    an    expert    what    every 
expert  knows  to  be  the  truth  is,   so  it  seems  to   me,   to 
commit  a  crime    in    the    name    of   Christianity   for  which 
Christianity  will  be  one  day  called  upon  to  account.      It  is 
therefore  to  help  the  Church  against  well-furnished  gain- 
sayers,  and  to  re-establish  her  character  for  conscientious 
investigation,  that  Christian  specialists  in  Orientalism  have 

*  Indeed,  without  any  previous  knowledge  of  it  on  my  part. 

34 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  35 

given  the  best  years  of  their  lives, — to  save  the  endeared 
religion  which  once  inculcated  every  honourable  principle 
from  continuing  herself  to  be  a  victim  if  not  the  agent 
of  that  most  sinister  of  equivocations  known  as  '  pious 
fraud.'  * 

My  procedure  is  thus,  I  hope,  now  clear  to  all.  The 
connection  between  Persia  and  Israel  has  been  found  to 
approach  identity,  as  was  only  to  be  expected  from  the 
fact  that  the  two  nationalities, — if  indeed  the  Jewish  could 
really  be  called  a  '  nationality,' — were  parts  of  the  same 
Empire  for  close  on,  or  more  than  two  hundred  years.  As 
this  is  a  point  unquestioned  a  posteriori,  so  the  doctrinal 
analogies  were  as  probable  a  priori  as  presuppositions,  as 
they  have  been  proved  to  be  historically  actual  through 
our  Oriental  research.  And  with  this,  note  the  unparalleled 
expressions  of  theological  sympathy.  If  we  have  found  a 
pictorial  sculpture  representing  Cyrus  as  worshipping  in 
a  Babylonian  temple,  a  sort  of  political  manifesto, t — and, 
if  we  regard  this  as  showing  clearly  a  strong  leaning  toward 
the  Babylonian  Baal-worship,  what  shall  we  say  as  to  the 
astonishing  language  of  this  same  Cyrus,  with  that  of 
Darius,  and  Artaxerxes  recorded  in  our  Bibles,  re-reading 
also  what  the  Jewish  prophets  and  historians  have  left 
written  in  response  to  it. 

I  hardly  think  that  anything  of  their  kind  approaches 
these  extended  statements  in  the  history  of  literature  as 
an  expression  of  religious  identity  of  feeling  between  two 
peoples  similarly  situated,  or  even  more  closely  connected, 
certainly  not  at  their  date  ; — that  is,  not,  when  all  the  other 
circumstances  are  held  in  view.  Recollect  that  the  Bible 
is  beyond  all  other  documents  regarded  as  hyper-sacro- 
sanct, and  by  nearly,  or  quite  one-third  the  human  race ; — 
even   sceptics  as  to  its  detail    acknowledge  harmoniously 

*  To  emphasise  such  a  point  should  be  hardly  our  secondary  object 
throughout  such  discussions  as  the  present, 
t  See  above. 


36  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

its  unspeakable  influence— then  let  us  re-read  attentively  what 
the  Bible  records  of  its  own  great  Jewish- Persian  Emperors. 

The  psychology  of  the  development  was,  more  distincdy, 
this  : — During  the  shock  and  sorrows  of  the  Captivity  God's 
people  turned  their  thoughts  from  earth  to  Heaven, — ^just 
as  we  so  often  do, — for  the  eventualities  had  proved  that  the 
emporal  rewards  so  persistently  promised  to  the  'righteous,' 
had  in  some  way,  and  for  the  time  being,  proved  illusory. 
Then  came  their  Deliverer  with  His  thronging  forces,  and 
with    a   change    in    their    immediate   circumstances   which 
micrht  well  have  re-assured   them  that   the   Psalmist   had 
indeed   'never    seen    the   righteous  forsaken';    see  above. 
And  also  that  very  same   enormous   event,   which  might 
well   have  convinced  them  that   this  world  should  at  last 
show  them    better    times  as    a    reward    for    their    fidelity, 
actually  itself  brought  with  it  the  same  setded  and  worked- 
out  doctrine  of  another  life  which  the  Jews  had  just  ac- 
quired, but  which  had  been  believed  in  from  their  birth  by 
those  same  large  masses   recruited   from   all  parts  of  the 
Iranian  Empire,  while  priests  of  this  Immortality  accom- 
panied   every   battalion,   or   made    many  groups   for  each 
corps,  with  an  illustrious  King  of  Kings  at  the  head  of  all 
of  them,   who   never  dictated   a  word   for  an    Inscription 
without  attributing  every  victory  to  the  '  Life-Spirit- Lord, 
the  Great   Creator,    Auramazda ';  see    Behistun  and  else- 
where.    What  wonder   then,  as  I  have  so  often  implied, 
that  the  Jews  listened  to   the  unconscious  expressions  of 
their  new-found  friends,  whose  fire-altars  at  times  glowed 
at    evening    widely,   and    that,   listening,    they    began   the 
more    to    vie  with    these    Persian    fellow-believers   in  the 
hopes  and  fears  of  what  was  now  the  common  Faith, — and 
so  the  doctrine   grew.     While   the   historically  more  con- 
servative party   amidst  the    Jews,   that  of  the  Zadokians, 
(the  Sadducees)  clung  with  aristocratic  tenacity  to  the  old 
simplicity,  and  opposed  this  growing  Zoroastrianism  of  the 
masses.     Yet   the    new   views,   adapted   as    they   were    to 


Ottr  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  37 

appeal  to  the  feelings  of  an  afflicted  humanity,  prevailed^ 
having  first  concentrated  themselves  in  a  sect  which  termed 
itself,  or  which  was  termed  by  its  indignant  predecessors 
Pharisees,  Farsees,  Persians,^  hardly  'separatists, ' '  dividers.'  f 
So  that,  at  the  time  of  Christ,  it  could  be  said,  and  upon 
His  own  authority,  that  'the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  sat  in 
Moses'  seat,'  and  it  was  from  him  '  who  lived  a  Pharisee ' 
that  our  own  future  hopes  were  chiefly  handed  down 
to  us.  J 

For  additional  literary  focus  to  our  results,  I  would  say, 
as  if  speaking  from  the  orthodox  point  of  view,  that  while 
the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  are  un- 
rivalled in  their  majesty  and  fervour,  constituting  perhaps 
the  most  impressive  objects  of  their  kind  known  to  the 
human  mind,  and  fully  entitled  to  be  described  as  '  inspired,' 
yet  the  greatly  more  widely-extended,  and  as  to  certain 
particulars,  long  prior  religion  of  the  Mazda-worshippers 
was  supremely  useful  in  giving  point  and  body  to  many 
loose  conceptions  among  the  Jewish  religious  teachers,  and 
doubtless  also  in  introducing  many  good  ideas  which  were 
entirely  new,  while  as  to  the  doctrines  of  immortality  and 
resurrection  within  a  restricted  sphere  the  most  important 
of  all,  it  certainly  assisted  and  confirmed,  though  it  did  not 
positively  originate  belief. 

But  the  greatest  and  by  far  the  noblest  service  which  it 
rendered  was  the  quasi-origination  and  propagation  of  the 
doctrine  that  'virtue  is  chiefly  its  own  reward,'  even  in  the 
great  religious  reckoning,  and  'vice  its  own  punishment.' 

The  time  is  now  past,  let  us  hope  for  ever,  when  the 
Christian  apologist  recoiled  from  recognising  the  very  im- 

*  The  modern  name  of  the  original  province  of  Persia  is 
Favsistan. 

\  It  is  bad  etymology  to  trace  words  to  an  abstract. 

\  Of  course  our  Lord  Himself  as  an  eschatologist  adhered  to  the 
tenets  of  the  Pharisees  ; — this  while  He  denounced  the  practices  of 
some  of  their  chiefs  who  were  contemporaneous  with  Him. 


38  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

portant  services  which  have  been  rendered  to  the  holy  faith 
by  peoples  foreign  to  the  Jews.  And  surely  no  one  will 
look  askance  at  the  happy  fact  that  not  only  a  small  nation 
to  the  west  of  the  Jordan  held  to  those  great  truths  on 
which  rest  our  hopes  beyond  the  grave,  but  that  the  teem- 
ino-  millions  of  Persia  also  held  to  them  in  successive 
generations  long  earlier  than  the  prophets.  These  con- 
siderations entitle  their  ancient  lore  to  our  veneration  and 
investigation.  It  now  lies  open  not  merely  to  the  laborious 
specialist  but  to  the  intelligent  student,— and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  from  the  mass  of  human  energy  devoted  to 
so  much  that  is  trivial,  some  fraction  may  yet  be  spared  for 
the  study  of  this  rich  and  influential  monument  of  the 
past  which  holds  such  a  conspicuous  place  among  the 
records  of  our  own  religious  history. 


SECOND  LECTURE. 

CONTINUED  RECAPITULATION  WITH  EXPANSION, 
AND  FRESH  POINTING. 

Anyone  who  has  been  disposed  to  treat  this  great 
subject  with  respect  has  already  seen  what  my  plain  issue 
is.  I  do  not  in  any  way  object  to  my  readers  or  hearers 
denying  any  possible  or  probable  original  influence  of  the 
Persian  theology  upon  the  Jewish-Exilic.  I  wish  simply 
to  place  in  clearest  light  the  undeniable  fact  that  two  such 
systems  existed,  one  in  North  Persia,* — and  the  other  in 
Perso- Babylonia  and  in  Jerusalem,  and  that  they  contained 
certain  crucial  and  fundamental  elements  which  were  ap- 
proximately identical.  There  can  be  no  doctrine  more 
angularly  practical  than  that  of  the  one-God-ism t  with 
creationism,  and  this  was  expressed  by  the  Persian  in  a 
manner  which  left  no  room  for  a  plurality  ; — Ahura  was 
supreme  as  the  'greatest  of  the  gods,'  having  created  the 
others  as  Yahveh  created  our  own  Archangels t :  '  He 
made  this  earth  and  yon  heaven ' ;  'He  made  man  and 
amenity  for  him ' ;  Genesis  is  not  stronger  ;|  while  the 
elohist  in  Genesis  uses  the  plural  §  word  for  the  Deity. 

As  regards  an  outcropping  dualism  in  the  one  and  the 
fundamental  dualism  of  the  other,  see  the  first  Lecture.  So 
also  for  the  animated  personal  immortality  |j  with  judgment, 

*  Or  focussed  there  while  universally  diflfused  throughout  Persia. 

t  There  can  be  but  one  '  greatest ' ;  see  the  First  Lecture. 

;[   Both  from  the  same  source  (?). 

§   In  some  occurrences  actually  meaning  a  literal  '  plurality.' 

II  Some  critics  may,  indeed,  be  surprised  that  I  make  so  much  of 
*  Immortality '  when  placing  it  among  such  supreme  principles  as 
Truth,  Love,  Order,  and  Energy  ;  but  manifestly  '  Immortality '  gains 

39 


40  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

etc.  These  vital  constituent  elements,  then,  exist  in  the 
two  systems  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  their  identity  is 
unquestioned  totally  aside  from  all  external  historical 
mfluence,  mutual  or  other,  between  the  two. 

[(But  a  very  urgent  moral  side-question  may  here  arise 
among  circles  acutely  interested  in  the  immediate  applica- 
tion of  these  supposed  or  real  facts  to  individual  believers, 
especially  to  the  young.  '  May  it  not  be  dangerous  ' — so 
they  might  say — '  to  our  practical  results  to  occupy  the 
attention  of  the  young  or  simple  with  religious  matter  even 
when  it  is  only  externally  foreign  to  their  desired  personal 
experience,  if  it  be  outside  of  the  point  of  immediate  con- 
version or  edification  ?'  My  more  advanced  readers  may, 
indeed,  not  understand  why  I  pause  to  notice  such  a 
suggestion,  but  I  do  so,  nevertheless. — and  I  would  answer 
the  query  first  of  all  with  an  emphatic  acquiescence. 

Scientific  religionists  will  not  deny  that  the  most  solemn 
and  beneficial  effects  result  from  our    manifold    forms    of 
Christianity  far  outweighing   their   defects  ; — and   God,   if 
He  is  anywhere  as  a  spiritual  force,  is  in  the  immediate 
application    of  the    good    elements   here.       To   block    the 
application  of  holy  ideas  is  to  negative  their  value.     All  the 
greatest  historical  doctrinal  truths  of  the  most  sacred  systems 
are  in   themselves   of  infinitesimal  value   aside  from  what 
they  effect  in  the  moral  redemption  and  edification  of  man. 
The  salvation  of  one  human  soul  from  sin,  so  to  speak  of 
it,  is  of  more  importance  than  all  the  doctrines  of  all  the 
religions  without  it.      Better  by  a  heavy  multiple  that  the 
young   romanist   should   never  hear  a  word   of  '  reforma- 
tion,'   nor    the    young   liberal    a    word    of   '  Church '    than 
that  the  new-born  hunoer  for   holiness  in   either  of  them 


all  its  dignity  as  an  effort  to  justify  our  creation.  How  else,  says  the 
religionist,  can  we  possibly  acquit  the  Author  of  our  being  ?  All  men 
born  into  the  world  should  each  certainly  be  willing  to  bear  his  share 
of  fraud,  bereavement,  illness,  and  poverty ;— but  none  the  less  the 
doctrine  of  a  judgment  on  high,  with  rewards  and  punishments  m  a 
future  state  has  its  chief  value  to  us  in  rectifying  the  uni\ersal  sense  of 
wrong.    Immortality  with  a  judgment  well  expressed  a  keen  moral  idea. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  41 

should  be  baffled  by  conflicting  claims.  Let  me  not  be 
misunderstood.  Settled  interior  tendencies  to  sin  are  the 
cause  of  the  worst  of  human  sorrows.  With  universal 
goodness  spurring  on  activity,  almost  the  entire  mass  of 
calamities  would  be  forestalled  ; — and  while  completeness 
could  never  be  reached  owing  to  unavoidable  pain  and 
bereavement, — yet  a  state  of  great  happiness  could  always 
be  indefinitely  evermore  approached. 

So  much  for  the  immediate  as  the  focus  of  benefits. 
Yet  closely  linked  with  it  is  that  past  which  the  present 
becomes  at  every  moment.  And  this  for  every  reason 
demands  our  earnest  attention,  for  it  not  only  helps  on  the 
present,  but  is  pregnant  with  the  future.  As  the  perfection 
of  human  character  is  the  most  wonderful  work  of  God,  it 
manifestly  both  encourages  and  guides  us  in  the  present  to 
study  its  history,  and  this  wherever  it  may  be  found, 
though,  again,  we  should  first  arduously  examine  that  past 
which  lies  nearest  to  us — once  more  x\\^  immediate.)^  After 
this,  to  shut  out  the  great  events  which  have  transpired  of 
this  nature  in  places  even  far  distant,  and  in  times  long 
gone  by,  is  not  to  be  permitted,  for  the  broadening  of  our 
minds  demands  it.  Of  all  the  ancient  religions  of  the  earth 
the  Persian  should  be  the  dearest  to  Jews  and  Christians 
on  account  of  its  close  intimacy  with  their  own,  and  also 
because  of  its  depth,  i.e.,  its  'interior'  spirit.  For  we 
can  freely  claim  that  the  Zend  Avesta  is  the  '  earliest  docu- 
ment '  of  interior  religion  searching  the  '  thoughts,  words, 
and  deeds.'  See  also  the  emphatic  iteration  of  personal 
religious  hopes  in  the  Inscriptions. — Egoistic  they  may 
be,  but  there  is  no  mistaking  their  sincerity.  And  there 
is  also  no  vulgarity  in  numbers  here,  for  who  of  us  has  not 
felt  aglow  at  the  'multitude  whom  no  man  can  number,' 
presumably,  among  the  '  saved  ';  and  coarseness  is  especially 
excluded  from  religious  statistics  when  the  widening  of 
numbers  carries  with  it  the  narrowing  of  '  perdition.' 

Here,  again,  Persia  fills  out  our  sphere  of  vision.      No- 
where else  on  the  face  of  the  earth  had  such  numbers  been 


42  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

affected  by  such  views.  They  were  in  general  characteris- 
tic of  all  Persia  (see  Plutarch*).  If  God  was  anywhere 
present  in  any  human  event  He  was  active  at  the  taking  of 
Babylon,  even  when  regarded  as  an  external  circumstance. 
How  much  more  if  the  Persian  army  was  animated,  if  only 
dimly,  with  an  interior  faith.  Had  Cyrus  failed  there, 
where  would  our  post- Exilic  Judaism  and  our  pre-Christi- 
anity  have  been  now  as  historical  facts  ?+  Somewhere, 
doubtless,  and  in  some  form,^ — but  where  ?  Cyrus  and  his 
successors  not  only  saved  the  Jewish  national  existence, 
but  restored  the  Jewish  worship  with  its  very  Temple. 

Time  likewise  works  with  these  considerations  of  vast 
populations.  If  but  one  in  a  thousand  J  among  the  Persian 
public  had  ever  really  felt  the  effective  influence  of  these 
interior  ideas,  yet  that  alone  must  have  accumulated  to  a 
vast  psychic  force  within  successive  generations. 

Political  motives  doubdess  played  the  larger  part  with 
the  Emperors  in  determining  upon  the  Restoration  of  the 
Jews,  yet  it  is  wholly  unreasonable  for  us  to  suppose  that 
religious  sentiment  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Recall  the 
altogether  remarkable  statements  in  the  Book  of  Ezra — 
the  announcement  by  Cyrus  himself,  the  requests  for 
Jewish  prayers  by  his  successors.  See  also  the  marked 
friendship  between  the  Persian  and  the  Jew  as  opposed  to 
the  bitterness  of  the  as  yet  unconquered  Babylon. 

To  ignore  what  Persia  did  under  the  hand  of  God  for 
the  Jews  as  for  ourselves  would  be  more  than  ingratitude  ; 
—to  deny  it  would  be  sacrilege,  impugning  either  the 
Divine  omnipotence  or  benevolence  in  one  of  their  most 
glorious  manifestations. 

*  As  noticed  above  at  the  head  of  the  supplementary  Lecture,  I 
have  been  much  gratified  to  know  that  some  of  these  Lectures  have 
been  read  aloud  to  sympathetic  audiences  in  Bombay ;— and  I  am  pleased 
to  hope  that  others  of  them  may  be  so  honoured.  It  is  this  which 
explains  the  recalling  of  ideas  already  once  before  expressed.  I  am 
reminded  of  the  continual  repetitions  inevitable  in  a  volume  of  sermons. 

t  See  the  first  Lecture. 

X  Are  more  than  this  average  affected  by  Christianity  ? 


Our  Own  Religio7i  in  Ancient  Persia.  43 

If  it  was  at  all  effective  in  the  sense  which  I  have 
urged,  it  cannot  be  described  as  less  than  the  most 
wonderful  pre-Christian  religious  work  of  the  Divine 
Power  outside  of  Israel.*  Arithmetic  itself  becomes 
sacrosanct.t 

As  to  both  of  these  elements — '  numbers  '  and  '  time  ' — 
Israel  stood  far  in  the  second  place,  owing  her  supremacy- 
alone  to  the  intensity  of  her  religious  feeling.  Being  insignifi- 
cant in  numbers,  she  also  reached  these  results  much  later. 
Her  immortality  was  for  the  most  part  a  dim,  shadowy, 
half-conscious  state  very  like  the  classic  Hades — with  little 
judgment  and  heaven  or  fiery  hell,  and  with  but  transient 
gleams  of  vivacity.:}: 

[( — This  is  notorious.§  Let  the  reader  take  up  his  pre- 
Exilic  Bible  and  read  Kings  and  Chronicles — ten  chapters 
at  a  time — he  will  be  profoundly  struck  with  this  marked 
negative  peculiarity  : — the  evil  kings  did  their  '  evil '  in 
the  sight  of  the  Lord,  died,  were  buried  in  their  appropriate 
sepulchres,  '  slept  with  their  fathers,'  and  their  varying  sons 
reigned  in  their  stead  ; — so  the  good  kings  did  '  good '  in 
the  sight  of  the  Lord,  died,  and  were  buried  in  their  several 
tombs,  and  where  is  there  any  judgment  for  the  evil  or  for 
the  good,  and  where  any  Hell  for  the  one  or  Heaven  for  the 
other — the  'Semitic  future  state'  before  the  exile  ignored  or 
scarcely  hinted  at  these  last,  as  every  scholar  knows.  ||  Look 
at  the  very  Ten  Commandments — the  place,  of  all  others, 
where  we   should  most  expect  to  find  it — where  is  there 

'■'  Can  even  this  exception  hold  as  valid  ? 

t  If  this  interior  system  operated  upon  a  vast  population  tenfold, 
if  not  a  hundredfold,  more  numerous  than  any  other  analogously 
affected,  then  every  century  through  which  that  influence  has  persisted 
multiplies  the  bulk  of  this  effect  ; — but  this  system  had  been  at  work  in 
Persia  for  prehistoric  periods ; — the  numbers  seriously  influenced  must 
therefore  have  been  very  great.  To  the  element  of  numbers  must 
therefore  be  added  that  of  time,  which,  indeed,  combines  with  it. 

X  Expansions  to  the  first  Lecture. 

§  And  it  was  preached  in  my  pulpit  close  on  forty  years  ago,  the 
speaker  not  having  been  then  thought  particularly  'broad.' 

II  And  as  has  been  long  since  popularly  ceded. 


44  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

any  Last  Judgment,  even  there  ? — where  is  there  any  just  re- 
ward or  punishment  ? — The  future  state  is  not  even  men- 
tioned. Who  has  not  been  shocked  by  this  ?  It  was  during 
the  horrors  of  the  Exile  that  God's  people  began  to  doubt 
whether,  indeed,  the  righteous  '  never  was  forsaken '  in  this 
life  ; — like  ourselves,  when  similarly  situated  amidst  financial 
ruin,'--  they  turned  bitterly  to  God,  and  sang  the  finest,  if, 
at  the  same  time,  the  most  terrific,  of  their  hymns  (see 
Ps.  cxxxvii.,  with  its  close,  if,  indeed,  that  close  be 
genuinet).  [Then,  soon  after,  we  begin  to  hear  of  '  awaking 
from  the  dust,'  of  a  judgment,  rhetorically  majestic  beyond 
description  (see  Daniel ; — '  Revelation,'  is  its  echo)  ;  then 
we  first  hear  of  a  'golden  age,'  culminating  in  the  thousand 
years  of  Chiliasm  (N.T.)  ;— then,  first,  the  angels  assume 
their  names  and  forms,  becoming  'princes'; — then  a  con- 
scious '  immortality  '  becomes  defined  ; — then  the  Saviour 
was  '  promised  long  ' — and  '  the  Gentiles  were  to  rejoice  in 
His  light,'  and  'the  earth' — not  alone  Judsea — 'was  to  be 
filled  with  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  as  the  waters  cover 
the  sea.'  It  soon  became  a  complete  pre-Christianity,  with 
the  known  results.)]  J 

But  may  not  the  Persian  system,  in  spite  of  all  just  said 
above,  have  likewise  acquired  these  views  suddenly  ? — By 
no  means ;  for  such  beliefs  as  these — a  God-Unity,  a 
developed  Angelology,  an  Immortality,  Resurrection,  Judg- 
ment, a  Heaven  (of  recompense)  with  a  definitive  Hell,  a 
millennial  Restoration  with  a  virgin-born  Restorer — inexor- 
ably presuppose  far-distant  antecedents  foreshadowing-  their 
coming-on  in  the  same  literature  in  which  they  became  at 
last  embodied,  unless  that  literature  conspicuously  lacks  suck 
antecedents.     In  Persia  this  foreshadowitig  stares  zis  in  the 

*  Reprinted  from  the  First  Lecture. 

t  [(Hell  itself  was  not  quite  quick  enough  for  their  fierce  ven- 
geance.)] 

\  Extract  from  a  speech  delivered  in  London  at  a  reception  kindly 
given  by  the  late  Mr.  N.  M.  Cooper  {a  leading  Parsi),  at  which 
Sir  George  Birdwood  and  Professor  Moulton  were  also  guests,  in 
June,  1 910, — and  from  articles  elsewhere  communicated. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  45 


face  ( — see  also  the  Rig    Vedci),  btU   in  pre-Exilic  Israel 
there  is  no  trace  of  it.' 


* 


[( — Interlude  and  Excursus,  with  continuous  recapitula- 
tion, upon  the  sepai^ate  and  parallel  movement . 

The  Religions  were  the  same — that  is  to  say,  as  to  their 
main  higher  elements,  and  this  without  external  historical 
connection  within  historic  or  even  otherwise  '  memorial ' 
times,  for  it  was  seventy  odd  years  before  Babylon  became 
Persian,  after  the  Jews  arrived  there.  Do  we  think  that 
we  have  any  right  to  ignore  this  or  to  belittle  it,  in- 
volving, as  it  does,  a  most  signal  work  of  God,  and  dealing, 
as  no  other  question  does,  with  the  human  psychic  unity, 
new  to  Israel,  immemorial  in  Iran?; — and  do  we  regard 
these  facts  as  only  fitted  to  arouse  our  orthodox  suspicions  ? 
I  think,  on  the  contrary,  that  we  shall  be  called  to  account 
for  it  if  we  neglect  them.— 

If  these  vast  multitudes  of  persons — on  one  side  vast — 
in  those  regions  throughout  such  long  periods  of  time  were 
so  marvellously  reached  by  them,  elaborating  them  further 
to  quasi-identical  conclusions — recall  the  list  above — in 
places  and  times  so  far  separated  from  each  other  that 
neither  one  of  the  two  races  had,  up  to  a  certain  date,  ever 
yet  heard  popularly  of  the  other,  speaking  reciprocally  un- 
known tongues,  and  yet  evolving  views  so  essential  to  spiritual 
growth, — surely  this  proves  that  this  development  was  inevit- 
able and  beneficial.  Please  to  remember  that  I  am  not  here 
vapidly  considering  loose  items  in  credulity  upon  the  other 
life  which  are  well-nigh  universal  to  mankind,  no  nations 
having  ever  appeared  without  them  vaguely  founded  upon 
dreams  and  diseased  visions, — I  am  dealing  with  two  closely 
compacted  systems  symmetrically  filled  out  as  if  carefully 
pre-arranged,  also  established,  and  only  with  these. 

That  God- Unity  has  with  it  a  definitive  Angelology,  its 
personalities  approaching  identity  with  the  Godhead  as  At- 

*  One  would  say,  indeed,  that  these  tendencies  must  have  long 
been  latent  among  the  keen-witted  Jews  awaiting  only  the  first  stir  to 
.burst  them  into  bloom. 


46  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ajicient  Persia. 

tributes,  or  included  with  Ahura  as  if  in  an  Heptade, — for 
He  is,  later,  if  only  through  confusion  of  ideas,  'one  of  a 
Seven', — an  Immortality  WM  a  Resurrection, — a  forensic 
Judgment  with  a  plain  heaven,  and  a  condemnation  uuith  a 
positive  Hell,"'''" — a  restoring  benefactor,  who  was  to  be  born 
out  of  the  common  course,  a  renewed  earth  in  a  paradise, 
which,  with  all  the  inevitable  accretions  of  grotesque  puer- 
ility, yet  became  marvellously  effective  none  the  less  in  a 
superior  spiritual  sense, — and  all  this  in  parallel  development 
absolutely  without  any  (?)  previous  immediate  external  com- 
munication between  the  two.  I  call  this  a  '  marvellous 
phenomenon  '  indeed,  and  as  solemn  as  it  is  wonderful, 
dealing  also  with  the  psychic  unity  in  a  manner  otherwise 
unknown  ; — and  yet  all  of  it  is  marred  or  lost  the  moiitent 
we  trace  all  these  identities  to  one  and  the  self-same  receyit 
exterjtal,  historical,  tactual  connection,  the  one  set  of  ideas 
having  merely  migrated  in  the  mass,  so  to  speak  of  it,  with 
some  suddenness  from  Persian  Babylonia  to  Babylonian, 
and  later  '  Persian,'  Israel, — mechanically  borrowed. 

The  migration  of  good  ideas  is  indeed  to  be  desired, 
and  we  have  long  endeavoured  to  further  it  even  with  mis- 
sionary zeal,t  but  certainly  it  is  a  different  thing  from  the 
spontaneous  origin  of  these  views  out  of  the  primaeval 
psychic  human  forces.  As  the  '  wonderful  phenomenon '  first 
of  all  proves  that  these  views  were  inevitable  in  the  unend- 
ing cycles  of  creation,  so  they  contain  elements  of  supreme 
utility,  as  no  one  wishes  to  deny,  they  being,  in  fact,  the 
secondary  utterances  of  the  Beneficent  Deity,  and  this  not- 
withstanding the  encrustations  of  erroneous  acceptations,  all 
centring  in  the  unsurpassable  doctrine  of  subjective  recom- 
pense which  no  religion  had  ever  expressed  so  fully  as  the 
Iranian.  Such,  then,  is  the  'phenomenon,'  the  original 
self-growth  of  these  compacted  thoughts  from  forces  con- 

*  With  a  subjectivity  almost  organic  in  the  Iranian  coming  less 
obviously  to  light  in  Israel ; — recall  '  he  went  to  his  own  place,'  one  of 
the  very  few  Semitic  occurrences. 

\  Recall  the  great  work  of  S.  J.  Mills. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  47 

stitutionally  present  in  the  human  personality,  dormant  even 
in  the  animal, — and  coming  inevitably  into  apex  and  activity 
in  the  course  of  ages  in  parallel  developments  more  rapidly 
indeed,  where  the  first  'spring'  of  them  was  strongest. — )] 

But  the  other  enormous,  if  secondary,  question  now 
comes  back  upon  us  with  accumulating  force  : — did  or  did 
not  the  so  widely  extended,  and  yet  compactly  moulded 
Aryan  creed  in  which  the  Israelites  were  engulfed,  so  to 
speak  of  it,  during  their  first  Exilic  centuries  in  Persian 
Babylon  exercise  any  later  and  supervening  beneficial  in- 
fluence upon  these  already  accepted  but  new-found  similar 
convictions  among  the  Jews?  Every  conceivable  circum- 
stance affirms  the  reciprocal  influence  of  the  two  systems,  the 
one  upon  the  other, — and  in  view  of  the  very  great  superiority 
in  the  position  of  the  recently  successful  Persians  to  that 
occupied  by  the  handful  of  mourning  captives,  that  influence 
upon  the  side  of  Persia  must  have  been  preponderating. 

Here  was  Israel  upon  the  one  side,  for  long  pre- Exilic 
centuries  without  a  pointed  hope  of  any  such  an  Immor- 
tality as  most  of  us  hold  dear,  without  a  definitive  Judgment, 
without  a  Resurrection,  without  a  clear  Heaven,  a  Millen- 
nium (or  a  Hell),  yet  suddenly  at  once  awakened  to  these 
expectations  by  a  calamity  which  had  brought  swift  ruin 
upon  their  remnant,  while  their  status  was,  at  times,  much 
like  that  of  slaves,  or  worse*  ; — and  vis-a-vis  to  them  were 
Median  multitudes — military,  civil,  priestly,  princely,  with 
their  illustrious  Imperial  figure  at  their  head — and  these, 
only  a  few  brief  decades  later  on,  swarming  in  the  streets 
and  roads  of  Persian  Babylon,  the  city  with  its  province 
now  from  that  time  on  the  Persian  capital. 

Aryans  to  a  man,  these  Medo- Persians — as  we  might 
almost  say  of  them — they  had  long  since  been  possessed 
with  that  same  hope  of  full  future  conscious  life  beyond 
the  grave  which  the  Jews  had  just  acquired — with  much 

*  Expansions   and   repointings   of    particulars    already   hinted   at 
above,  and  here  supposed  to  have  been  earlier  orally  delivered. 


48  Ozcr  Ow?i  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

emotion,  let  us  believe.*  With  what  surprise,  then,  grow- 
incr  to  astonishment,  must  the  excited  Semites  of  the  early 
Captivity  have  first  discovered  this  grateful  fact!  Here 
they  were  themselves  just  new-born  novices,  as  it  were — a 
grouplet  of  beginners  in  a  full  system  of  Immortality — doubt- 
less also  much  affected  by  the  impression  that  their  views 
were  a  new  discovery,  and  stirred  to  their  utmost  depths 
with  all  the  emotional  effects  of  regeneration  in  its  train. 
But  when  the  Persian  army  appeared,  whose  victory  and 
continued  presence  were  hailed  as  their  temporal  salvation, 
they  discovered,  to  their  amazement,  that  their  own  fresh 
ideas  upon  futurity  were  an  ancient  creed  with  their  new- 
found friends,  and  that  they  were  held  almost  universally — 
not  always,  of  course,  with  that  personal  fervour  which  the 
Jews  then  felt  as  neophytes, — but  that  they  were  most 
certainly  held  with  ponderous  conviction  by  the  very  chief 
representatives  of  the  new  Babylonian  life,  who  would  be,  of 
course,  the  so-called  Magian  priesthood. 

Everything,  as  regarded  also  from  every  reasonable 
point  of  view,  looks  rather  toward  this  later  influence  of 
the  o-reat  religious  patron  nation  upon  their  once  suffering, 
but  now  grateful,  proteges,  while  but  few  have  suggested 
the  other  direction  to  the  current.  'Affection,'  alone  of 
itself,  must  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  intricate 
psychic  motions  inevitably  stirred  within  the  one  party  in 
the  vivid  situation.  The  signal  Conqueror  of  their  op- 
pressors would  be  naturally  the  object  of  their  enthusiasm, 
as  would  be,  indeed,  the  leading  personages  in  his  garrisons. 
Think  of  the  change  which  Cyrus  occasioned  in  their  cir- 

=■'•  These  are  the  obvious  ineffaceable  facts  which  the  most  ultra- 
conservative  of  all  historical  theologians  will  not,  because  he  cannot, 
attempt  to  dispute,  they  being  the  A  B  C  of  all  historical  religious 
knowledge  upon  the  points.  No  Bible-class,  nor  indeed  should  any 
Sunday-school  instructor,  be  without  this  knowledge  as  to  this  most 
solemn  circumstance.  It  was  Our  Own  religion  in  a  friendly  race ;— and 
this  should  be  rather  more  than  less  pressing  upon  the  attention  of  every 
student  of  our  Holy  Faith,  teacher  or  taught,— that  is  to  say,  so  long 
as  we  hold  to  this  spontaneous  growth  of  Immortality  among  the  Jews. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  49 

cumstances  at  his  advent,  and  see  how  they  recalled  it  in 
Isaiah  xliv.-xlv.  My  claim  in  argument  is,  therefore,  for  a 
very  strong  and  completely  surrounding  and  enveloping 
later  and  supervening  influence  of  the  North  Persian  One- 
Godism,  Angelology,  Immortality,  Soteriology,  Judgment, 
Resurrection,  Millennium,  Heaven,  and  Recompense,  upon 
the  same  slightly  earlier  developments  in  Israel  during 
the  Captivity. 

[(-But  let  me  also  not  be  misunderstood  here  once  again 
while  repeating  a  principle  which  I  hold  to  be  crucial  in  all 
these  discussions.  Many  have,  indeed,  held,  and  still  hold, 
to  the  striking  opinion,  so  often  here  noticed  to  refute  it,  that 
this  entire  scheme  of  Persian  theology  and  eschatology, 
not  only  subsequently  confirmed,  defended,  and  encouraged 
— in  a  word,  ^  saved'  these  views  within  the  Jewish 
Pharisaism — a  proposition  which  we  may  accept — but  that 
the  Persians  originally  and  first  of  all  taught  the  Jews  these 
things  in  their  full,  definite,  out-formed  shape,  as  a  whole, 
through  dominant  influence  or  through  charm. 

I  do  not  regard  it  as  being  at  all  a  just  or  honourable 
thing  to  lay  one  illogical  straw  in  the  path  of  those  many 
who  have  held,  or  still  hold,  to  such  a  view,  if  they  hold  to 
it  with  honesty.  A^iy  so-called,  or  real.,  divine  authority, 
through  inspiratio7i  or  the  like,  has,  as  I  Jirmly  hold  with 
the  most  advanced  of  opponents,  little,  if  anything,  to  do 
with  the  fact  that  po7^tions  of  the  mere  mental  ideas 
involved  have  been  impar^ted  through  various  sources  wholly 
unconnected  with  any  previous  especial  development  of  the 
faith  concerned.  Inspiration  has,  as  I  contend,  nothing 
whatsoever  to  do  with  the  question  of  the  mental  channels 
through  which  the  bare  ideas  of  any  good  creed  may 
have  been  imparted  to  a  favoured  race  or  people  ; — and 
much  do  I  deplore  the  prevalence  of  a  contrary  im- 
pression.*-)] 

*  See  these  remarks  in  other  words  at  the  close  of  the  first 
Lecture.  Repetitions  of  an  admonitory  nature  and  the  recalling  of 
ideas  are  here  unavoidable,  for  the  reasons  already  stated. 

4 


THIRD  LECTURE. 

THE  PHILOSOPHIC  INITIATIVE  OF  AVESTA  IN  THE 
LIGHT  OF  APPLICATION,  WITH  CONCURRENT 
RECAPITULATION,  ESPECIALLY  ADDRESSED  TO 
PA  RSI  S.* 

I.  What — so  some  of  us  may  inquire — is  practically 
after  all  this  value  of  Avesta  upon  which  such  emphasis  is 
laid  ?  Professors  of  philosophy  in  the  central  home  of 
learning  would  not  ask  of  us  such  a  question; — but  it  is  still 
well  worth  our  while  to  suppose  it  put  and  to  answer  it, — 
for  those  who  wish  to  name  it  may  be  reassured  at  once. 

The  intellectual  initiative  of  Avesta  was,  like  its  fellows, 
a  condensed  psychic  force,  evolving  almost  untold  results 
even  in  economics. 

The  immeasurable  financial,  political,  and  educational 
force  in  Christianity  surpasses  that  of  Avesta,  but  yet  it 
affords  us  a  lead  in  our  discussion  here.  Thousands  of  mil- 
lions could  hardly  stand  as  a  proper  expression  for  the  hard 
results  of  the  Christian  system  ;t--and  Zarathushtrianism 
once  scored  as  heavily,  for  in  remoter  influence^  it  once 
helped  the  other  on. — Avesta  has  been  this  eminent  initial 
force  in  history ;— and  history,  let  us  remember,  is  the 
compact  summary  of  crucial  facts.  Christianity,  let  us 
claim  it,  has  been  the  most  potent  of  all  forces  to  restrain 
murder,  rapine,  theft,   and  arson; — but  Zarathushtrianism 

*  As  an  appeal  for  a  higher  appreciation  of  their  impressive  lore, 
t  What  was  Church  property  once  worth, — and  what  is  it  not  worth 
yet  ?— in  buildings,  lands,  hospitals,  organisations  for  collecting  funds, 

etc. 

I   Beyond  all  question. 

50 


Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  51 

was  before  it  in  the  same  line  of  preventive  causality 
without  immediate  early  historical  connection,*  and  by 
assisting  oained  an  after-share  in  the  results. 


The  Nature  of  the  Psychic  Forces  here. 

{a)  We  open  the  Avesta,  and  first  of  all  we  meet,  imme- 
diately upon  its  folios,  what  I  have  already  described  in 
much  detail  above. t — It  was  a  God,  who  is  supreme  indeed 
over  the  good  creation,  but  saved  through  limitation  from 
all  responsibility  for  the  evils  which  so  unjustly  liamper  us, 
with  regard  to  which  He  was  neither  implicated  through 
origination  nor  permission,  these  evils  being,  as  we  have  later 
discovered,  inherently  necessary  to  existence.  And  surely 
this  was  the  first  clue  ever  given  to  this  now  inevitable 
opinion  .'* — No  one  before  our  sage  had  so  traced  all  our 
woes  to  the  counter-creative  activity  of  an  independent  Evil 
Spirit,  who  was  also  necessarily  original  and  eternal, | — and 
who  upon  his  part  was  within  his  limits  verily  an  evil  *  God 
of  this  world,' — a  scheme  which  was  beyond  all  question 
first  motived  by  a  school  of  which  Zarathushtra  became  the 
leading  mind.  No  one  has  ever  doubted  that  the  Evil 
God  was  thought  of  because  the  evils  of  experience  seemed 
utterly  incompatible  with  the  absolute  omnipotence  of  any 
good  Supreme  Being§  ; — therefore  that  scheme  initiated 
within  all  known  history  the  entire  clearness  of  modern 
conclusions  on  this  subject.  The  idea  may  have  been 
mooted  earlier,  but  we  have  no  record  of  it. 

{b)  The  Archangels  also  of  this  Supreme  Being  who  in 

*  Zaruthushtrianism  was  identical  with  Christianity  only  in  the 
immemorial  fundamental  elements  in  prehistoric  ages  from  which  each 
developed  ;  see  above  and  throughout. 

t  But  which  we  cannot  name  too  often, — so,  necessarily  also  when 
we  wish  to  link  it  in  with  companion  issues. 

\  See  the  first  and  second  Lectures. 

§  Some  idea  of  '  mere  indignity  '  had  effect  among  other  considera- 
tions ; —  other  evil  elements  aside  from  right  and  wrong,  doubtless  had 
something  to  do  with  it ; — at  times  much. 


02C7'-  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 


%!> 


the  highest  conceivable  sense  also  '  limit '  Him,  were  no  mere 
winged    creatures    of    the    poetic    imagination,    but,    most 
sublimely,  His  own  attributes,  those  few  mighty,  if  simple, 
essential  principles  which  alone  save  life  from  being  chaos, 
and   the   Universe  from   being  '  Hell '; — they  govern    the 
Supreme  God  Himself; — He  could  not  violate  them  if  He 
would.     Could  anything  be  more  impressive  ?     He  is — as 
said — otherwise  One  only  and  supreme  ; — for  the  few  sub- 
ordinate things,  called  '  deities,'  were  His  creation  ; — recall 
our  own  Archangels  ; — and  this  in  no  way  impairs  His  sove- 
reignty ; — compare  likewise  our  Tri-unity  ; — there  can  be 
but  one  'supreme'  good  object,  but  one  '  Greatest  Creator.'* 
This,  as  said  and  as  understood  above — this  idea  of  a 
Supreme    God    still    fettered    by    His    character — led    the 
ancient   world   at   its    date    as    a    scheme    of  conservative 
theism,    with    all    its    vast    economic    consequences  ; — and 
this  initiative  is  what  gives  it  its   '  scientific  '  importance. 
[( — Can  anything  modern  of  the  kind  be  compared  with  it  } 
Instead  of  presenting  such  a  contradiction  as  a  good  God, 
who  could  create  immortal  beings  predestined  by  Himself 
to  everlasting   fiames,    He   was  actually  in  essence  rather 
more   limited   by   His   own    attributes   than   even   by    His 
supposed    terrific    personal    Opponent.f      He    could     not 
possibly    have    been    personally    concerned     in    such    an 
origination.)]     Here  we  have  first  of  all   in  obvious  light, 
the   chief   elements   in   all   theological   representation   per- 
sonified, saving  the  nature  of  the   Most  High  God  from 
the   crime  of   permitting   the    origin,    and    continuing    the 
existence  of  the  greatest,  saddest,  and  most  familiar  of  all 
the  sorrows  which  force  themselves  upon  us. 

The  horrors  of  evil  existence — so  it  is  unavoidably 
implied — were,  as  said,  inevitably  fixed  as  constitutive  links 
in  the  chain  of  causality,  and  this  in  the  very  vital  elements 
of  that  existence  itself,  with  its  supposed  '  will-freedom  '; 
recall   Heraclitus  ; — the  Good  God  was  therefore   morally, 

*  In  the  Veda  Mitra  was  the  full  mate  of  Varuna,  but  in  the  Avesta 
this  independence  was  absorbed  in  the  supreme  'creationism'  of  Ahura. 
t  So,  in  the  interior  elements  of  the  subject. 


Our  Oivn  Religioii  in  Ancient  Persia.  53 

but,  praise  to  His  Holy  Name,  only  'morally'  supreme, 
never  mechanically  omnipotent ;— He  could  not  disintegrate 
the  very  laws  of  His  own  being ••^■- ;— '  it  must  needs  be  that 
the  offence  come.'  This  alone  was  an  immense  idea,  if, 
indeed,  but  one  in  ten  thousand  ever  understood  it ; — there 
have  been  many  thousands  since.  The  contrary  to  it 
would  be  mental  mania,  which  only  fails  to  make  men 
'  demons  '  because  we  dare  not  think  ;— recall  the  third 
creed,  'incomprehensible,'  'incomprehensible,'  'incompre- 
hensible.' A  wonderful  thought,  indeed,  it  was  for  the 
time,  700  to  900  B.C.,  and  for  the  place,  North-east  or 
North-west  Iran  ;— f  and  a  wonderful  thought  it  is  for  all 
time,  if  we  could  but  afford  to  permit  ourselves  to  see  it. 

No— the  Good  God,  according  to  this  implied  principle, 
never  made  a  '  Hell  '  beneath  or  here  ;— that  '  Hell '  has 
been  as  eternal  in  the  past  as  it  shall  be  in  the  future. 

(c)   The  Constituent  Elements  of  the  Gdthic  Character. 
And  where  at  such  a  date  was  there  also  such  a  dis- 
crimination of  men  '  as  to  thought,  word,  and  deed.'     A  few 
little  words|  these  are  doubtless,  and  common  enouo-h  at 

present,  as  we  may  say,  but  if  acted  on,  still  how  deep ; 

as  all  well  know,  they,  little  and  few  though  they  be, 
would,  if  followed,  then  raise  the  world  from  the  '  death  of 
sin  to  the  life  of  righteousness ';— and  they  find  their  first 
original  here  ;— for  where  was  there  at  such  a  date,  and  in 
such  a  place,  their  duplicate  .^  They  were,  therefore,  epoch- 
making  in  the  redemption  of  man  from  brutality.  See 
also  'that  bodily  life  and  the  mental '—again  but  a  few 
little  words,  and  often  falsified  by  hypocrites ;— but,  while 
they  express  a  refined  view  which  soon  became  familiar, 

-  There  was  one  thing  which,  thanks  to  His  supreme  hmitation. 
He  could  not  be,  —a  felon. 

t  This  is  the  place  most  clearly  indicated  to  us ;— but  it  pervaded 
Iran  ; — see  the  first  Lectures. 

X  '  A  few  little  words '  indeed  now  left  to  us,  but  those  few  imply 
hundreds  whose  memory  has  perished. 


54  Our  Own  Religion  i?i  Ancient  Persia. 

they  were  once  more  again  epoch-making  in  the  unfolding" 
of  our  civiHsation.  It  was  a  'few  Httle  words'  which 
revealed  the  Copernican  theory  ; — Isaac  Newton's  law 
expressed  itself  in  nine  words  ; — see  the  memorable  frag- 
ments of  Heraclitus,  how  short  they  are  I — It  is  '  a  few 
little  words  '  always  which  awake  the  world. 

(d^   Subjective  Recompense. 

And  where  elsewhere,  at  such  a  date,  does  the  wicked's 
'own  soul'  shriek  at  him  on  a  Judgment  Bridge; — and 
where  does  '  his  own  beatified  conscience  '  meet  and  reward 
the  blest  man  on  the  path  to  a  Heaven  again  of  '  good 
thoughts,  and  words  and  deeds '  ?  '  Virtue '  is  here  first 
in  history  'its  own  reward,'  so  definitely,  and  'vice  is  its 
own  punishment.'^' — If  this  had  not  been  said  then,  much 
immediate  amelioration  might  have  been  postponed  ; — recall 
our  Lord's  own  later  searching  words  as  to  '  the  thought 
the  essence  of  the  crime.' 

Were  these  things  mere  historic  relics  of  the  past — 
gems,  so  to  speak,  and  nothing  else  ? 

I  have  elsewhere,  just  above,  implied  the  vast  results 
of  every  kind  which  flowed  from  these  psychic  forces ; 
but  it  will  be  well  to  return  to  them  for  a  moment  and  to 
expend  a  few  further  comments  upon  them  ; — and  first,  their 
acute  spiritual  result.  Zarathushtra  was  no  hypocrite  ; — 
hypocrisy  was  not  then  the  fashion  ; — nor  had  people  learned 
that  it  might  pay, — and  if  but  one  man  even  in  a  hundred 
thousand  throughout  those  coming  ages  really  sought  God 
in  the  manner  said  (with  thought,  word,  and  deed),  with 
the  '  care  of  the  poor '  as  his  charge,  and  a  '  Heaven  of  good 
principles '  in  his  eye,  what  more  than  this  could  we  desire 
or  expect  .'^  This  was  what  we  used  to  call  'conversion.' 
What  Christian  or  pre-Christian  could  think  of  purer 
character?  Even  such  an  average  as  that  just  named — 
one    in    a    hundred    thousand — would    soon    mount    up,    a 

*  So,  epoch-making  as  a  distinctive  delineation; — see  the  first  Lecture. 


Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Pei^sia.  55 

'  gem '  which  Hved  on  with  vital  effect  is  a  '  gem '  which 
we  should  study  and  revere.  Tens  of  thousands  up  to 
millions  must  have  been  made  penitent  throughout  those 
pre-Christian  centuries  by  Faiths  like  this, — so  from 
statistics.  Was  this  'nothing,' — a  '  trivial  result '?  If  we 
have  souls  ourselves  we  must  value  good  in  souls  from  that 
one  fact  only. 

It  is  our  duty  to  God,  to  ourselves,  and  to  our  fellow- 
men,  to  study  this  and  to  pray  over  it. 

(e)   Then  the  Quasi- external  Realistic  Reivard  in  Heaven. 

The  present  Spiritual  World  likewise  must  be  taken 
into  consideration.  We — the  most  of  us — believe  that 
souls  live  on,  that  they  are,  as  it  is  said,  '  immortal'  If  so, 
the  soul  of  Zarathushtra,  at  the  head  of  his  innumerable 
spiritual  descendants,  Iranian  or  others,  multitudes  as  they 
were  and  are,  exists  to-day  as  saved  on  high  ; — is  that 
nothing  .'^  I  do  not  at  all  apologise  for  having  mentioned 
it.  No  true  prophet,  of  course,  whether  Jewish  or,  indeed. 
Christian,  could  despise  saved  men  of  their  own  Cyrus's 
race,  the  race  of  their  Deliverer,  their  God's  '  anointed,' 
who  likewise  served  the  '  God  of  Heaven '  presumably 
'in  thought,  in  word,  and  deed.'  What  Christian,  or  pre- 
Christian  pious  Jew,  could  have  asked  more  than  that  souls 
should  strive  for  a  Heaven  of  holiness  in  such  a  spirit,  and 
with  a  record  of  corresponding  deeds  ?  Souls  uncounted 
are  in  Heaven  now  this  moment,  if  there  be  indeed  any 
Heaven  anywhere  at  all,  solely  in  consequence  of  things 
like  this,  this  strongly  formulated,  established,  but  simplest,* 
Law.  Is  this  then,  again,  '  nothing'?  One  might  challenge 
opposition.  No  sane  human  being  who  has  a  heart  can 
doubt  that  this  is  something. 

(/j  And  there  are  external  rewards  upon  earth  ; — these 

*  The  entire  mass  of  evangelical  Christendom,  with  its  enormous 
effects,  claims  only  the  very  sUghtest  number  of  points  ; — they  rejoice  in 
reducing  all  to  '  conversion.' 


56  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

forces   live  on   here.     All    human    life    is    physically   one, 
— so  science  shows  us,  the  father  surviving  within  the  son, 
so,  actually,  as  also  the  mother  ; — and  a  soul's  sentiments 
pass    on   through    example,    teaching,    warning,    discipline, 
and    promising — that    is,    by   entailed    mental    tradition    as 
even    by   intellectual   inheritance.      If  there   be   any   good 
in   us   to-day,   we    are    now    what    we    are    of   that    good, 
because   Zarathushtra  and  his  like  were  what  they  were 
three    thousand   years   ago  ; — they  sowed   the   seed  ;  they 
focussed  the  scattered  holier  forces.     This  is  ev^en  medical  ; 
see    above.       Ideas    themselves    are    hereditary,    not    only 
traditional, — so  that  we  need  not  ask  'what  good  is  it  at  all '? 
Our  own  living  status  at  this  hour  is  here  involved  ; — if  we 
can  earn  our  livings  now,  and  keep  our  property,  we  owe 
it  to  the  Saints  of  Iran   and   their   like   in   India,   Egypt, 
Babylon,  and   Israel  ; — they  first   planted   these   principles 
here  and  when   they  did.     Who   does    not    see    it  ? — and 
this — let    me    repeat    it, — if    but    one    among    a    hundred 
thousand  of  our  forebears  were  '  heart-devoted '  to  a  God  of 
honour.     All  the  good  on  earth  to-day  is  a  continuation  in 
an  unbroken  line,  largely  psychical  if  not  physical  ; — Asha 
is  'incarnate'  now,  as  when  Yasna   XLIII   was  written; 
—this  guides  our  '  living'  present,  which  is  ever  becoming 
future.      History    is    here    no    mere    amusement,   and    the 
Gathas,  with  their  large  lost  portions,  are  the  foundations  of 
this  history,     (g)  By  studying  the  past  we  can,  first  of  all, 
now  and  here,   awake  our  thankfulness  to  God  for   what 
is  good  in  it ; — and  this  helps  us  now  and  here  ;  and  the 
evil  in  it  warns  us  ; — is  this  again  nothing  }     If  we  have 
any  feeling,  it  is   beyond    all    question,   '  something.'      So 
only    can    we    understand    the    present,   take    courage    for 
the  future,  with  foresight.      By  recalling  the  virtues  of  the 
past — if  there   were  any  virtues   in   that  past,    and   some 
there  were  beyond  all  question — we  respect  our  race  ; — and 
this  gives  us  still  further  hope  and  energy, — for  so  we  respect 
ourselves.     And   (li),   as    to    antiquity,   again,    the   further 
back   we   can   trace   such    Hymns  as    Zarathushtra's — and 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  S7 

scores  of  the  like  once  lived  and  told  their  tale— the  wider 
the  circles  of  their  influence,  for  the  further  back  they  began 
their  work,  the  longer  has  been  the  time  for  them  to  produce 
effect ; — we  fatuate  ourselves  when  we  ask,  '  What  good  is 
there  in  what  is  old,'  even  'old  goodness'?     The  further 
back  the  holy  effort,  the  more  were  the  people  who  have 
felt  it,  some  ameliorated  beyond  all  question — so  '  saved.' 
Hearts  by  the  myriad  would  have  broken  but  for  this  lore, 
homes  by  the  thousand  would  have   been   destroyed  ; — I 
challenge  the  direst  infidel  to  doubt  it.     Virtuous  energy 
has  been,  and  is,  incited  by  such  laws,  and  virtuous  energy 
fills  our  barns  with  plenty  and  our  chests  with  gold.     This 
is  physiology,  as  I  intend  it,  the  hardest  of  all  hard-headed 
fact; — these  doctrines  of  3,000  years  ago  are  among  the 
things  which  save  us  now ; — it  is  ingratitude  to  slur  them 
or  to  conceal  them. 

II.  We  can  now  return,  with  all  just  said,  to  emphasise 
once  more  the  '  most  stupendous  '  event*  which  ever  hap- 
pened in  that  secular  history  of  Israel  ;— for  it  has  been 
neglected,— one  of  the  most  '  stupendous  '  also  in  all  history 
in  view  of  what  we  deem  its  consequences. 

I  have  endeavoured  above  with  litde  expansion  to  point 
out  blundy  the  immense  effects  of  Christianity  upon  every 
conceivable  interest ;— it  is  not  further  necessary  to  dwell 
upon  that  matter.— [(Any  person  capable  of  an  economic 
estimate  will  see  at  once  that  our  Religion  underlies  our 
material  civilisation,  having  become  to  a  large  extent  the 
land's  common  law,  its  great  vitalities  of  truth  carrying 
away  all  the  defects  of  mere  historical  or  dogmatic  error.)] 
The  influence  of  Judaistic  Christianity,  with  its  ten  Com- 
mandments and  its  crucified  Redeemer,  has  made  the  world 
a  hundredfold  more  possible  :— the  Coliseum  would  not 
be  conceivable  to-day,  nor  would  be — parts  of— Pompeii. 
But  Zoroastrianism  was  a  twin-sister  to  that  faith  which  made 
this  change,  though  an  independent  one,  pre-dating  Exilic 

*  See  p.  42,  second  Lecture. 


58  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Judaism  ; — and  but  for  that  political  power  which  represented 
Zarathushtra  the  voice  of  Ezra  would  never  have  been  heard  ; 

the  Divine  Being  might  have  selected  some  other  means 

to  accomplish  similar  universal  results,  but  they  would  not 
have  been  these  means, — nor  these  results.  As  scientific 
historians  we  are  forced  to  say  that  an  intensely  effective 
element  in  the  combined  forces  would  have  been  totally 
wanting,  whether  replaced  by  some  other  influences  or  not, 
we  need  not  ask.  Judaism  with  Christianity  then  was,  and 
is,  an  incalculable  power  in  the  world  predominating  for 
good,  Muhammadism  being  their  offspring,  and  no  one  of 
the  three  would  have  been  what  it  was  save  for  Persia — 
secularly,  certainly  not  ; — nor  would  Buddha  have  come  to 
lio-ht  but  for  Persia's  twin-sister  Lore,  the  Veda.  Had 
Cyrus  not  arrived  when  he  did  with  his  permanent  conquest, 
then,  for  all  that  we  can  see,  the  re-settlement  of  Judah  at 
Jerusalem  by  Persia  would  have  been  indefinitely  post- 
poned* ;  possibly  it  would  never  have  taken  place, — and 
Judah  would  have  been  left  to  sing  other  sad  psalms  in 
her  vast  captive  home. 

The  nascent  hopes  of  a  definitive  spiritual  world  on 
high,  with  its  grand  items  of  the  creed,  might  have  been  a 
mere  flash,  smothered  by  the  rich  forms  of  Babylonian  super- 
stition ; — the  animated  history  of  the  re-founded  Jewish 
polity  would  never  have  transpired  ;  nor  would  the  prophets 
of  the  Return,  with  the  second  Isaiah  at  their  head,  have  ever 
penned  their  fervid  chapters; — nor  would  the  Asmonean 
Princes  have  made  Judah's  name  for  the  first  time  glorious 
in  war  ; — nor  would,  indeed,  the  Son  of  Mary  have  been 
born  where  He  was,  to  rule  futurity.f 

But   Cyrus   did  arrive   at   last,   and   the  vast   chain   of 
causalities  began  to  move. 

What  other  event  of  a  similar  kind  can  be  compared 

^ith    it!  —  this,    almost   aside   from    the    Persian   religious 

element.      That  course  was   taken   which  alone  made  our 

*  Repointing    and    expansions    of    things    said    above;    see    the 

preceding  Lectures. 

t   Not  in  a  nation  rebuilt  by  Cyrus. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  59 

Judaistic-Christianity  and  Muhammadism  possible, — while 
the  philosophy  of  the  '  great  renunciation '  was  likewise 
spreading. 

{a)  Then  this  action  was  neither  insignificant  nor  acci- 
dental. 

Sometimes  very  insignificant  events  have  produced 
immeasurable  effects — the  Crucifixion  (!)  of  itself  would 
have  been  deemed  '  trivial '  by  many  ; — see  Tacitus.  But 
here  was  a  move  only  to  be  looked  upon  as  petty  on 
account  of  the  pettiness  of  a  '  nation,'  saved  by  it  in  a  small 
side-place  within  the  largest  and  most  energetic  Empire  of 
its  day  or  of  its  past* — ruling  from  Egypt  to  India  and 
from  the  Ocean  to  the  Caspian,  It  was  altogether  a  big 
move  on  the  part  of  a  big  power.  The  conquest  of  Judsea 
was  but  a  mite  in  the  main  conquest  of  Babylonia,  though 
her  estimate  would  not  be  ours ; — and  the  re-creation  of 
Judsea  was  but  a  fraction  of  one  of  the  world's  greatest  con- 
summations,— if  to  us  a  colossal  fraction.  To  neglect  this 
in  our  political  studies  would  be  as  fatal  as  it  would  be  in  our 
religious  searches; — regarded  as  a  grasp  upon  genius  alone, 
it  preserved  to  us  the  world's  greatest  book  ;t — the  Iliad 
was  different ; — and  then,  last  of  all,  because  not  externally 
so  obvious  to  us,  it  brought  into  Babylon  a  great  conserva- 
tive Religion  which  soon  showed  identities  with  Zion. 

III.  Here  I  must  make  one  confirmatory  point  not  yet 
elsewhere  sufficiently  pushed  home,  but,  in  fact,  it  is  the 
chief  'motive'  to  this  present  Lecture  of  'application.' 
None  deny  the  copious  abundance  of  Persian  allusions  in 
the  Scriptures,  centring  in  the  somewhat  touching  crisis  of 
the  Return  ; — here  the  great  restorative  decrees  occur 
with  requests  by  the  Restorers  for  divine  assistance  ; — Judah 
becomes  again  a  nationj: — a  mere  item  among  the  more 
than  score  incorporated  in  the  mighty  Empire,  but  still  a 
nation,  if  we  could  call  her  that.  In  her  scriptures  capable 
philologists  discover  over  a  hundred  Persian  words,  and  the 

*  Persia  ruled  mid-Asia  where  she  liked,  and  ruled  it  rigorously. 

t  The  Bible. 

I  See  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  etc. 


6o  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 


'<b 


most  superficial  of  readers  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  with  one 
dire  but  most  overshadowing  significant  particular, — that  is, 
the  close  approach  of  the  new  Jewish  Satan  in  those  exilic 
pre-Christian  and  Christian  times, — a  Satan  so  exactly  like 
the  Persian  Afigra  Mainyu*; — see  him  especially  in  the  New 
Testament,  where  he  is  actually  termed  'a  God,'  'the  God.' 
Where  did  Satan  ever  come  to  such  excessively  close 
quarters  before  in  early  Jewish  times?  Some  even  doubt 
altogether  whether  it  was  '  Satan '  who  tempted  Eve,  the 
serpent  being  one  of  the  '  beasts  of  the  field.'  And  where 
else  was  '  he  '  at  all  so  prominent  as  in  Iran's  faith  ?  At  the 
first  we  only  infer  later  actual  historical  literary  influence, 
but  scientific  history  has  here  also  something  quite  addi- 
tional to  say. 

{b)  Just  as  we  know  from  the  scant  fragments  left  us  of 
Avesta  that  its  literature  was  originally  manifold  as  great — 
so  we  may  be  sure  that  the  religious  political  communica- 
tions from  Persia  and  to  Persia  still  left  us  in  the  Bible, 
were  but  a  tithe  of  what  were  really  exchanged  ; — nay,  scarce 
a  hundredth  part ; — so  we  must  always  measure  things  in 
'  scientific '  history  ; — a  tithe,  or  a  hundredth  part,  only  of 
such  evidence,  survives  ; — this  has  been  forgotten  by  most 
of  us.t  But  the  intercourse  between  Great  Babylon  and 
her  tiny  province  must  have  become  continuous,  the  political 
machinery  in  that  Empire  being  kept  taut ; — and  Babylon, 
let  us  never  forget,  was  Persia's  Capital. j 

Insignificant  as   the  Jews  must   have  been   politically, 

'•'  See  above. 

t  Readers  used  to  imagine  that  all  which  Persia  had  to  do  with 
Judah  is  contained  in  what  is  left  to  us  of  all  the  greatly  numerous 
documents  and  fragments  which  once  made  up  the  Bible.  '  Yes,'  we 
used  to  say,  '  Cyrus  is  mentioned  in  an  interesting  manner ' — '  he 
decreed  the  Restoration ;' — '  Darius  is  mentioned,' '  Xerxes  is  mentioneed 
and  Artaxerxes ' ; — and  '  Babylon  was  Persian.'  Did  we  even  know 
this  last  ?  First  of  all,  we  never  dreamt  that  half  our  Bible  perhaps  has 
been  lost  to  us,  nor  that  but  a  hundredth  part  of  the  Persian  decrees 
have  been  preserved  ;- — it  is  indeed  well-nigh  a  miracle  that  so  much 
has  escaped  annihilation. 

I  Practically,  if  not  actually,  so  for  two  centuries  more  or  less. 


Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  6i 

though  their  city  flanked  the  road  to  Egypt,  no  thorough 
historian  doubts  that  they  attracted  more  than  their  natural 
share  of  imperial  attention,  for  beyond  all  question  their 
incisive  religious  animus  gained  the  notice  of  the  Govern- 
ment as  of  the  Emperors,  unless  we  ignore  Ezra  as  pure 
forgery.  See  how  their  religious  lyrics  became  an  object  of 
envious  derision  to  the  pre- Persian  Babylonians.*  Persian 
notice  of  Judah  would  argue  reciprocal  'notice'  of  Persia 
on  the  part  of  Judah,  even  if  we  had  no  positive  record  of  it, 
as  vice  versa ;  this  I  have  said  before f — and  what  a  record 
have  we  got  of  it  deemed,  too,  inspired. 

[c]  Some  writers  used  to  deny  '  all  connection  '  of  Jews 
with  Persia — especially  religious  connection  and  mutual 
influence — and  these  persons^  would  recoil  when  we  show- 
how  tremendous  this  influence  was  ; — but  we  can  follow  up 
our  advantage  and  show  from  Scripture  a  tense  activity  on 
the  part  of  Persia,  whether  in  flank,  or  originally  direct ; — 
it  might  well  stagger  all  contenders. 

So, — the  Jezvs  got  nothing  religions  from  their  deliv- 
erers,— did  they  not ! — This  (!)  is  what  we  were  called  upon 
to  consider,  though  it  would  astonish  any  sane  outside  critic ; 
— but  I  gather  that  the  Decrees  had  some  little  of  'religion' 
about  them.  Read  their  astonishing  sentences — astonish- 
ing still,  if  yet  but  half  of  them  be  genuine.  He,  Cyrus, 
was  the  representative  of  the  dominant  Asiatic  power — 
mid-Asiatic, — also  its  unique  religious  representative  ; — see 
the  Inscriptions  ; — (they  break  all  records  in  such  writings, 
focussing  piety  if  they  did  not  really  impassion  it). — He, 
Cyrus,  forerunner  of  Darius,  adopts  the  God  of  Israel  as 
the  '  God  of  Heaven  '  (Deva),§ — avows  himself  to  have 
received  a  revealed  command,  and  is  so  stated  to  have  re- 
ceived it  by  the  Jewish  writer  :   'All  the  kingdoms  of  the 

*  See  above,  Ps.  cxxxvii. 

f  See  my  Zavathushtra,  Philo,  the  Achaemenids  and  Israel,  1905-06, 
Vol.  II. 

%  Presumably  they  exist  no  more. 

§  A  curious  Iranian  exception,  indeed,  if  my  conjecture  be  correct, 
for  '  deva '  otherwise  too  sadly  represented  '  Demon  '  there  in  Iran. 


62  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

earth,'  so  he  begins,  'hath  the  Lord,  the  God  of  Heaven, 
given  me,'  thus  repeating  his  own  now  lost  domestic  edicts, 
anticipating   Behistun  ; — this  alone   is    some  guarantee    of 
genuineness; — 'and  he  hath  charged  me  to  build  Him  an 
house  in  Jerusalem' — ^just  as    he  had    rebuilt   temples   in 
Persia  and  in   Babylonia.     There  was  some  litde  religion 
and  even  '  theology  '  there,  I  think.    [(We  have  strenuously 
worked   in   foreign   missions — here  we  have  meanwhile  a 
'  supreme  record  '  with  non-supported  itineration.)], — Cyrus, 
like    Darius,   the    Supreme   Head   of   Auramazda's   Faith, 
accepts  Jahveh  Elohim  apparendy  as  His  equal  with  another 
name; — or  did  he  literally  mean  by  *  God  of  Heaven'  his 
own  Auramazda? — here  named  as  '  Asura,  Ahura,*  God  of 
the  shining  sky.' 

He  acknowledges  Jahveh  Elohim  as  the  '  God  of 
Heaven,'  who  had  charged  him  to  build  a  House — and  the 
inspired  writer  corroborates  his  claim  to  inspiration,  even  to 
a  most  incisive  form  of  it ; — he  actually  wrote  :  '  The  Lord 
stirred  up  the  Spirit  of  Cyrus,'  and  adds,  '  in  order  that  the 
word  of  the  Lord  by  Jeremiah  might  be  fulfilled,'  see 
jer.  li.  ; — and  this  proclamation,  adopting  and  acknow- 
ledging the  '  God  of  Israel,'  became  politically  universal 
according  to  the  passages ; — he,  Cyrus,  so  it  reads,  '  made 
a  proclamation  throughout  all  his  kingdom,  his  Empire,  and 

also  put  it  in  writing. 't 

I  fear  that  very  few  of  us,  indeed — even  of  our  Bible- 
teachers — have  ever  at  all  taken  in  what  this  means, — if, 
indeed,  but  the  half  of  it  be  true. 

Those  were  no  days  of  electric  intercommunication,  but 

*  Perhaps  he  only  meant  that  Jahveh  Elohim  was  a  great 
Secondary  God,  in  full  forceful  harmony  with  his  Supreme  Ahura, 
much  perhaps  like  Mithra,  or  like  Gabriel,  or  like  the  '  Spirit,'  as  some 
would  understand  it ; — and  was  that  nothing  for  the  Persian  Emperor 
to  say.     (Vedic  '  Asura  of  Heaven.') 

I  In  some  now  lost  inscription  or  document.  Portions  of  such 
edicts  amplifying  the  Behistun  inscriptions  have  actually  been  found  in 
Babylon ;  see  '  Babylonische  Miscellen,'  Weissbach  ;  and  also  papyri 
fragments;  see  '  Aramaische  Papyrus  und  Ostraka,'  Sachau,  191 1. 


Our  Own  Religion  in   Ancient  Persia.  63 

that  edict,  if  it  was  ever  really  so  issued,  must  have  held 
up  the  Holy  Faith  for  the  first  time  to  a  vast  public  in 
the  first  of  the  then  existing  civilised  powers  in  all  its 
religious  centres.* 

{d)  And  we  see  from  the  Avesta  with  the  Inscriptions 
what  kind  of  a  '  God '  Cyrus,  with  his  successors,  must 
have  thought  of  when  he  so  wrote.  He  and  they  would 
gladly  have  received  support  from  any  serious  Deity 
wherever  he  had  obtained  credit ; — and  small  blame  to  the 
lot  of  them  for  this  ; — but  if  Cyrus,  with  Darius,  really 
thought  chiefly  of  the  '  greatest  of  the  Gods  who  made  this 
earth  and  yon  heaven,'  'who  made  man,'  with  all  the 
lesser  Gods, — if  he  really  accepted  Yahveh  Elohim  as  but 
another  name  for  his  Aura-mazda — was  there,  then,  no 
religion  there  ; — or  even  supposing,  as  I  have  suggested,  that 
he  merely  thought  Jahveh  to  be  a  high  secondary  good  God  ; 
— was  that  nothing  ?  Little  wonder  that  Christians  name 
'  St.  Cyrus.'  Here  was  even  religious  tenderness  beyond  all 
doubt  made  practical  by  deeds,  with  political  benevolence 
and  political  church-building.  The  Faith  of  God  was 
authoritatively  proclaimed  by  her  great  master  to  Israel  as 
to  the  world.  Nobody  who  is  sincere  and  sane  would  call 
that  a  '  trivial '  circumstance. 

So  much  for  a  pointed  propaganda  followed  up  with  ac- 
tion. Even  if  Cyrus,  Darius,  and  Artaxerxes  were  politically 
but  half  sincere,  they  made  good  their  assertions,  and  with 
great  ultimate  effect, — not  that  they  fully  understood  them. 

{e)  And  was  the  later  influence  of  Persia  also  of  little 
account  religiously  as  a  factor  in  development  ?  I  have 
firmly  asserted  that  the  dominant  system  of  the  Persians 
only  later  assisted  the  Jewish  orthodoxy, — but  was  that 
*  assistance  '  trivial,  especially  in  view  of  the  large  negations 
of  one  influential  party  ?t     What  competent  historian  can 

*  I  am  proud  to  recall  again  the  epoch-making  worlc  of  my  fore- 
kinsman,  but  what  *  mission  '  has  approached  that  act  of  Cyrus  in 
spreading  evangelistic  light  ? 

t  The  non-eschatologists  (Sadducees). 


64  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

doubt  that  this  influence  was  great — perhaps  crucial — till 
'  life  and  immortality  were  brought  to  light  ?  Unless  we 
totally  deny  all  ordinary  intercourse  between  immense 
Persia  and  its  pet-favoured  subject  nationality,  the  infer- 
ences become  overwhelming.  If  Persia  produced  any 
effect  at  all — and  who  but  a  fatuate  can  doubt  this — after 
restoring  the  Jewish  nationality,  with  its  religion,  then  this 
influence  must  have  been  pronounced  indeed.  And  as 
the  acknowledtred  relicrious  influence  was  so  massive,  so 
an  animated  intellectual  result  was  unavoidable.  From 
what  source  did  our  Lord  receive  that  word  '  paradise,' 
now  with  us  also  a  name  for  Heaven,  used  in  the  most 
awful  moment  of  our  religious  history  '^  One  word  like 
that  implies  an  hundred  once  used  in  Israel,  now  lost  to  us  ; 
— this  is  the  inain  point  I  am  now  endeavouring  to  drive 
home  as  our  focus  in  procedure — :  whence  came  the  hundred 
odd  other  Persian  words  of  our  surviving  Hebrew  Bible.'** 
That  hundred  imply  a  thousand  ; — so,  in  scientific  history .f 
Whence  came  the  military  roads,  and  whence  the  aqueducts  } 
'  Every  depression  was  to  be  exalted ' — levelled  up — '  and 
every  elevation  was  to  be  brought  low ' — made  passable. | 

This  point,  which,  as  I  assert,  is  crucial,  has  been 
fatally  neglected,  this  'estimate  by  the  multiple.'  To  read 
even  the  overwhelming  '  persianism '  of  Ezra,  Nehemiah, 
and  Esther,  with  Jeremiah,  the  new  Isaiah,  Ezekiel,  and 
the  rest,  as  if  they  were  all  that  Persia  did  and  said  in 
those  connections,  is  to  lose  ourselves  to  all  sound 
reason.  What  other  science  ever  so  limited  its  evidence  ^ 
Who  but  an  incompetent  would  take  a  few  stray  nuggets 
as  all  of  a  precious  metal  to  be  found  in  any  given  place 
suspected  to  be  gold-bearing  } 

I  assert,  with  every  careful  attention  to  what  I  say,  that 
the  capture  and  occupation  of  Babylon  with  its  Provinces 
by  Cyrus  was  not  only  a  mighty  event  in  the  history  of 

*  See  above. 

t  This  is  the  only  way  to  get  a  straight  view  in  serious  investigation. 

\  For  the  Persian  '  posts,'  the  earliest  known  in  history. 


Oui^  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia.  65 

politics  and  war,  which  no  one  disputes,  but  that  its  results, 
both  immediate,  in  restoring  the  Jewish  nation,  and  later, 
in  protecting  and  influencing  its  worship,  were  well-nigh 
incalculable; — see  above.  Without  it,  where— as  1  have  so 
often  asked — would  the  post-exilic,  pre-Christian  creed  have 
been  ? — Where  the  Christian  ? — Where  ihe  Muhammadan  ? 

IV.  It  is  therefore  our  close  Christian  duty  to  study 
this  event  in  all  its  bearings.  The  foundations  for  this 
study  I  have  been  here  endeavouring  to  lay  anew,  as 
in  all  my  well-meant  works.  How  can  we  study  the  Bible 
without  studying  the  Inscriptions  and  the  Bible  of  that 
Restorer  who  alone  made  our  exilic  Bible  possible  .'* 

{a)  In  studying  the  Zend  Avesta  let  us  first  winnow 
out  the  chaff  (with  no  offence  to  Parsis),  for  every  like 
religious  document  must  have  its  puerilities.  To  fling 
aside  the  Zend  Avesta  on  account  of  some  of  these  shreds 
of  quaint  ancient  fable  would  be  only  to  prove  ourselves  as 
silly.*  Out  of  the  mass  of  them  the  grand  forms  of  a 
noble  faith  soon  rear  themselves,  and  we  should  yield  them 
our  attentive  veneration. 

*  See  the  first  Lecture. 


FOURTH   LECTURE. 

THE    AVESTA    AND    THE   VEDA.* 

[( PVas  Philos  Logos  the  sotn^ce  of  Volunnanah  ? — a  light 
question  in  Avesta  and  its  connections  which  may  intro- 
duce our  theme, — 

One  of  the  most  ill-timed  devices  with  which  a  group 
of  parasites  ever  endeavoured  to  wreck  a  subject  was 
a  suggestion  of  two  decades  past  (for  a  moment  also 
repeated  by  a  man  of  reputation, — eating  his  own  recent 
words) ; — it  was  this, — that  the  Avesta,  even  in  its  oldest 
parts,  was  no  earlier  than  the  Advent,  and  that  one  of  its 
Amshaspends  was  Philo's  Logos.  This  is  not  the  place 
to  waste  words  on  those  who  do  not  know  that  the  pur- 
pose and  '  motive '  of  the  Philonian  Greek  logos  was 
radically  the  opposite  to  the  '  motive '  of  the  origin  of 
Vohumanahf,  nor  that  the  seven  (literally  six)  cities  of 
refuge  mentioned  in  Philo  Judaeus  did  not  originally  suggest 
the  Seven  Spirits  of  Tobit,  Ezekiel,  and  the  Avesta,  the 
dynamis  basilike  of  Philo  having  been  taken  from  the  Kurios 
of  the  Septuagint,  which  the  gifted  Alexandrian  in  his 
(accidental)  ignorance  of  Hebrew,  applied  independently.  J 
But   it    happens    that    the    clear  facts    which    these  hasty 

*  This  Lecture  was  publicly  delivered  at  the  Indian  Institute  in  Oxford 
some  years  ago ; — it  has  been  since  made  use  of  in  Instructional  Lectures. 
It  also  appeared  as  two  articles  in  East  and  West  of  Bombay  in  1902, 
and  was  re-edited  as  enlarged  in  The  Open  Court  of  June  and  December 
1 9 10,  translated  into  Italian  lately,  here  appearing  in  a  fourth  edition. 

t  For  the  Greek  logos  was  invented  as  an  intermediary  between  God 
and  all  matter,  an  idea  which  presupposes  an  original  antagotiism  between 
the  two  utterly  repugnant  to  Zoroastrianism. 

I  See  Siegfried,  Philo  v.  A.  als  Ausleger  der  A.T.  p.  214. 

67  5 


68  Oii7'  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Pe^'sia. 

observers  have  so  singularly  overlooked  in  claiming 
Greek  origin  to  Vo/nmianak,  possess  in  themselves  ex- 
ceeding interest  (quite  apart).  And  this  comes  out  most 
fully  in  the  obvious  answer  which  we  have  to  give  to  a  view 
now  held,  as  I  believe,  by  no  expert  of  authority  ; — for  the 
one  simple,  but  at  the  same  time  impressive,  circumstance 
which  proves,  once  for  all, — and  as  one  would  say,  without 
a  returning  question — that  Philo  could  not  have  inspired 
the  Gathas,  is  the  forgotten  point  (or,  perhaps,  the  as  yet 
too  litde  known  one)  that  the  Avesta,  as  all  experts  must 
acknowledge,  is  almost  Veda.  If  the  gifted  Jew  inspired 
the  one,  he  could  not  well  have  missed  the  honour  of  being 
father  to  the  other  also. 

Let  this  then  stand  as  the  objective  to  our  entire  dis- 
cussion here, — its  '  text,'  so  to  speak  of  it,  namely,  '  the 
almost  close  identity  of  Avesta  with  Veda.')]* 

The   Veda  and  the  Post-  Vedic  Indian. 

The    incalculably    rich    and    varied     Indian    literature 
opened  to  us,  indeed,  an  exceptionally  interesting  world  of 
early  civilisation, — and  that  so  closely  subtle  and  compacted 
as  to  be  at  times  almost  blasd.     We  have  delighted  in  the 
grandly  simple  and  highly  coloured  Rik,  where  gods,  heroes, 
and  demons  struggle  in  a  maze  of  close  particulars  so  dim 
as  to  specific  points,  in  fact,  as  to  be  in  places  almost  a 
tangle,   but  all  combined   in  a  moving  mesh-work  out    of 
which  life's   passions  glint  at  every  turn. — We   have   en- 
joyed the  calm  Brahmanas  with  their  placid  puerilities,  set 
here   and   there   with  the   invaluable  lines   of  early   myth 
and    deeper    thought ;   we    have   been    charmed    with    the 
melodious  epic,  till  at  last  the  '  Friendly  Counsel '  with  its 
inimitable  fables  has  fairly  won  our  hearts  ; — and  we  have 
stood  throughout  in  respect  at  what  may  well  have  been 

*  As  this  Lecture  may  appear  within  a  different  cover,  and  upon  another 
date  from  the  others  upon  the  general  subject  of  '  Our  Own  Rehgion  in 
Ancient  Persia,'  matter  unavoidably  comes  before  us  here  which  has  been 
already  touched  upon  in  those  previous  pages. 


The  A  vest  a  and  the    Veda.    ,  69 

the  earliest  sources  of  speculative  conjecture, — but  who  ever 
dreamt  that  there  was  a  Veda,  in  some  respects  equal  to  it 
all  and  superior  to  much,  far  up  in  the  misty  north,  a 
thousand  miles  from  Ganga,  and  as  old    perhaps   as    the 

oldest  Rik  ?  * 

Yet  so  it  was,  and  It  began  to  be  suspected  not  so  very 

lono-  aeo,  for  the  tracinor  of  the  particulars  still  goes  freely 

on.     And  it  is  this  which,  strange  to  say,  brings  in  the  full 

evidence   even    of   the    Indian    documents   upon   some    of 

our  own  (Occidental)  religious  dogmas, — of  which  let  the 

'  Philonians  '  here  take  notice  ; — not  that  there  existed  any 

closer  historical  connection  between  them  and  our  religious 

views  than    that   through    the  Avesta.      No  one  who  can 

read,  as  we  may  say,  can  well  deny  the  identity  of  many 

thoughts  in  Avesta  and  in  our  Exilic  or  post-Exilic  sacred 

Semitic  books,  even  if  we  did  not  have  the  Gathic  demon 

Asmodeus  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  where  he  was  opposed,  as 

in  the  Avesta,  by  the  'Seven  Spirits,'  not  forgetting  also  the 

mention  of  the   Persian  Avesta  cityf  Ragha,  Rayes,  Rai, 

all  in  a  single  piece,  though  not  in  a  single  chapter  ; — but 

how  much  are  we  startled  when  we  recollect  that  the  Rig 

Veda  itself  is  here  related?     It  is  indeed  a  'far  cry'  from* 

the   Ganges   to    Jerusalem,   or    even    from    the    Indus    by 

way  of  a  Persian  Babylon, — but  longer  stages  have  been 

'laid  behind.'     Of  course  we  have  the  additional  item  of 

attraction  that  the  stories  of  these  lores  are  the  tales  of  our 

kinsmen, — and  why  not  of  our  very  ancestors  ? — May  they 

not  positively  preserve  the  myths  of  the  ancient  tree  from 

which   we  actually  descended  ? — they  certainly  concern  a 

bough  of  it. 

Was  Avesta  then  concocted  in  our  a.d.  One  {sic),  when 
the  Persian  language  had  been  Pahlavi  for  centuries? — 
Did  some  ancient  Chatterton  of  Teheran  at  the  time  of 
Christ,  or  just  before  it,  weave  such  a  cunning  tale  as  even 

*  At  least  as  old  as  the  Brahmanas,  possibly  much  older, 
t  Recall  also  the  statement  that  it  was  '  also  in  the  cities  of  the  Medes ' 
where  some  Jewish  tribes  were  deported. 


70  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

the  Gathas  tell  us  all  unconsciously  indeed,  as  if  in  passing* 
and  wholly  without  effort  to  convince  us,  nay,  even  without 
a  single  attempt  to  state  any  one  so-called  historic  fact 
in  the  historical  manner?; — if  he  did.  he  must  have  been 
at  work  for  India  as  well.  But  the  age  for  such  miracles 
in  letters  had  ceased,  or  never  was,  in  Old  Iran  with  all  like 
hidden  influences  long  before  it  ceased  in  late  Jerusalem. 
From  this  let  us  proceed  a  little  further. 

The  First  Ho7ne  of  the  Aryans  in  their  Migration,  as 
the   Tribes  divide, — Identities  persist. 

To  trace  out,  then,  our  analogies  more  fully,  let  us  take 
first  of  all  the  familiar  name  of  'Aryan,'  which,  while  used 
as  an  adjective  completing  the  especial  name  of  the  Great 
Indo-germanic  race,  is  also  much  applied  to  the  present 
Indians  and  Iranians.  The  term  occurs  frequently  enough 
in  the  Rik,  but  strange  (or,  yet  again,  not  so  strange)  to 
say,  it  is  only  marked  as  the  '  generic '  in  Avesta,  though 
it  appears,  as  might  be  expected,  enormously  widespread 
over  all  Europe  as  well  as  in  south  and  mid-Asia ;  see 
it  even  in  the  Celtic  Iran  and  in  the  Irish  Erin.-\  So  that  I 
need  not  have  paused  to  allude,  if  only  with  a  few  syllables, 
to  'distances.'  For  no  one  anywhere,  as  we  may  now 
well  presume,  supposes  that  the  Indians,  as  we  have  long 
since  named  them,  were  indigenous  to  India,  or  that  what 
influence  they  may  have  exerted  issued  originally  and 
altogether  from  the  land  of  the  Seven  Rivers.  :|:  The 
present  so-called  Indians  were  invaders,  of  course,  coming 
down  as  a  rulincr  mass  into  the  lands  now  known  to  us  as 
India  from  the  north  and  the  north-west,  and  by  that  same 
Khyber  Pass  which  has  seen  the  ingress  of  so  many  differ- 
ing peoples  at  memorable  epochs.  We  can  easily  trace 
their  very  movements  southward  and  south-east.  The 
old  Rik  of  the  Veda  mentions  the  rivers  on  whose  shores 

*  See  my  remarks  above,  in  the  previous  Lectures, 
t  So  it  is  supposed ;  cp.  Airyena  V{a)ejah. 
\  Or  '  of  the  five ' ;  pafij-db  is  the  '  five  waters.' 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  71 

they  dwelt  at  successive  intervals  as  they  slowly  spread. 
The  first  Rishis  sang  of  Indus  with  its  tributaries,  then 
the  later  ones  at  last  of  the  Ganges.  The  men  of  the 
Brahmanas  and  commentaries  had  reached  still  more  dis- 
tant points  in  the  same  ever-persisting  direction.  But, 
what  is  still  more  decisive,  we  can  also  trace  the  sources 
of  their  movements,  so  to  say,  backwards  to  the  north,  till 
we  find  them  as  far  up  as  mid-Afghanistan  ; — then,  leaving 
Vedic  lore  entirely,  we  actually  discover  their  presence  in 
feeble  remnants  among  the  Iranian  tribes, — that  is  to  say, 
we  have  in  Avesta,  old  and  late,  the  presence  of  people 
who  oppose  the  new  Iranian  party,  and  who  correspond, 
at  least  as  to  the  chief  name  of  their  deity,  to  the  Indians 
rather  than  to  the  Iranians,  for  they  were  termed  D(a)eva- 
worshippers  in  reprobation.  First  they  are  seen  in  the 
Gathic  Avesta  as  deadly  foes  of  the  Zoroastrians,*  then 
later  as  a  beaten  fragment  left  behind  by  their  disappearing 
fellow-countrymen,  as  a  servile  class.  So,  backward  and 
northward  we  trace  the  scattered  throngs  of  tribes  named 
Aryan,  till  we  come  upon  what  may  have  been  a  quasi- 
description  of  the  primeval  home  itself  (for  all  of  them, 
as  of  all  the  other  Aryans). 

It  would  be,  indeed,  a  point  of  peculiar,  if  not  of 
solemn,  interest  if  we  could  fix  the  very  spot  which 
was  once  the  early  scene  where  the  Indo-germanics 
acquired  those  dominant  characteristics  which  distinguish 
them  from  the  hardy  Mongol  and  the  brilliant  Semite. 
But  beyond  all  doubt  we  have  really  an  attempt  at  least 
to  allude  to  the  'starting-point'  of  all  Aryan  Indo- 
iranian  migration.  The  account,  as  it  reached  us,  is 
contained  only  in  a  few  sentences  amidst  much  of  a  later 
type  which  could  not  fail  to  encrust  itself  upon  it,  helping, 
however,  by  its  very  presence  to  preserve  the  ancient 
hints. 

We  find  it,  this  depictment,  in  the  celebrated  first  and 
second  fargards,  or  chapters,  of  the  Vendldad,  '  first '  in  the 

*  Zarathushtrians. 


72  Ou7'  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

order  of  printed  texts  in  some  editions  (but  by  no  means 
first  in  the  order  of  genuine  priority — this  of  course). 
Here  we  have  a  sort  of  rough  Genesis  with  a  series  of 
Edens,  and  with  successive  expulsions.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  fragments  of  early  fable  (enclosing  history) 
which  has  been  left  to  either  Aryans  or  to  Semites. 

The  exact  determining  of  Localities  is,  of  course,  not  feasible. 

Where    the    old  place    precisely  was    we    can,   indeed, 

never   know,    but   the    Iranians    of    the    two   (the    future 

Indians  and   Iranians)  alone  report  it,   curiously  enough.* 

No  place  called  'Arya '  is  prominent  in  the  Veda,  though 

the  word  is  frequent,  but  at  the  very  outset  of  the  Avesta 

document    we    have    the     'fatherland.'     It    was    Airyana 

V{a)ejah,  the  race's  'start.'     The  Aryan -f  seems  to  have 

been  the   'tiller'  first  rallied  to  his  work,  and  we  have  in 

the  scant  narratives  one  of  the  first  records  of  an  attempt 

to  rise  above  the  level  of  the  otherwise  universal  savage 

life. 

T/ie  March  of  the  Aryans. 

Wherever  the  land  in  fact  really  was,  it  cannot  fail  to 

impress    us,  even  without    the    fuller    information,  as    the 

momentous  scene  of   the   first    movement    of   the  present 

dominant    races    of    the    world,    to    subdue    predestined 

subjects. 

The  stirring  Cattse. 

It  would  seem  to  have  been  somewhere  up  in  the  frozen 
North,  for  the  first  resolution  to  move  on  came  from  the  con- 
straining force  of  weather  ;  that  is  to  say,  from  cold  :  '  Ten 
months  winter,  two  months  summer,  cold  on  the  land,  cold 
on  the  water,  cold  on  the  plants,  cold  on  all,  winter  demon- 
made.'  From  this  began  that  mighty  march  of  the  Aryans, 
if  not  of  all  the  Indo-germans,  whose  subjugating  footstep 
presses    everywhere    as    beneficent,  let    us    hope,  as    it    is 

*  So  far  as  I  know. 

t  I  trace  the  word  to  the  root  ar,  '  to  plough,'  as  in  aratrum ;  see  the 
previous  Lectures. 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  Jt, 

irresistible.  It  received  its  first  impulse  from  the  unvaried 
and  imperative  cause  of  many  similar  advances — I  need 
hardly  further  name  it — 'discontent.'  It  was,  however,  no 
unreasonable  nor  sudden  restlessness,  nor  was  it  brought  on 
by  a  change  which  was  rapid  in  its  effects.  Its  cause  was 
one  of  the  most  unbearable  of  those  powers  which  afflict 
us,  and  also  one  of  the  most  prohibitive,  if  not  destructive, 
to  the  prospects  of  an  early  civilisation.  Climate,  that 
sovereign  power  under  which  the  '  mode  of  motion '  * 
appears  to  be  modified  or  diverted  (for  it  cannot  be 
destroyed),  was — as  so  often — the  impelling  force.  Not 
perhaps  for  the  first  time  ;— that  can  be  hardly  possible, 
but  for  a  first  time,  in  an  energetic  primaeval  line,  it  gave 
the  push  of  fate,  and  stirred  in  the  virile  breasts  of  our 
forefathers  or  fore-kinsmen  f  their  first  fixed  thought  of 
tribal,  not  to  say  of  national,  prospective  pioneer  adventure 
as  a  unit.  It  was,  indeed,  no  foolish  curiosity  which  led 
them  on,  for  these  Aryans  were  as  litde  fanciful,  if  we 
may  judge  from  their  practical  points  in  literature  and 
in  polity,  as  any  of  the  other  main  divisions  of  mankind. 
Their  reasons  were  indeed  less  trivial  than  those  which 
induce  most  similar  decisions.  They  moved  out,  as  we 
gather  from  the  venerable  tale,  before  the  temperature  as 
it  chilled,  one  of  the  most  convincing  of  all  motives  for  a 
migration — receding  step  by  step. 

Whence  came  this  Climate  s  change  ? 
What  sort  of  a  fall  in  temperature  was  this  particular 
one  recorded?  We  know  that,  in  lands  now  ice-bound 
throughout  the  year,  the  bamboo  once  grew  in  torrid  heat 
quite  half  a  foot  in  thickness  and  rising  to  a  dozen  yards  ; 
— so  the  elephant,  as  we  see  from  fossil  ivory,  once  stalked 
in  the  dense  fens  of  hot  Siberia.  Can  It  be  possible  that 
these  strange  words  of  the  book  Vendidad  actually  report 
a  similar  change  from  a  similar  cause  ?  And  was  that 
cause  conceivably  the  original  decline  of  caloric  upon  the 
*  Heat.  t  Sic. 


74  Oiir  Oivii  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

earth's  crust, — or  was  it  induced  by  a  sun's  periodicity, — 
colossal  inference, — or  by  what  ?  If  it  were  the  former, 
what  an  obtrusive  item,  or  rather  what  a  dominant  oc- 
currence, do  we  possess  in  this  remote  event  of  which  we 
have  so  clear  a  trace ! — a  change  from  the  cooline  of  a 
region  upon  the  surface  of  the  globe  in  the  course  of  the 
original  refrigeration,  and  within  human  times, — not  in 
human  history,  of  course,  but  in  human  myth,  reflecting 
earlier  tales  that  grew  from  fact. 

And  why  should  this  be  so  stoudy  doubted,*  as,  doubt 
it,  of  course,  we  must  ?  That  its  essential  idea  was  mere 
guess-work  of  the  story-tellers  lighting  upon  frost  as  a 
chance  theme,  does  not  seem  to  be  so  likely.  The  simple 
seers  of  the  villages  would  not  so  naturally  have  hit  upon 
such  a  fancy  as  'cold'  for  the  conceived-of  motive,  or 
moment,  in  '  driving  a  whole  people  out.'  Some  actual  past 
event  of  the  kind  of  an  enduring  magnitude,  in  immemorial 
times,  had  evidendy  sunk  deep  in  the  hereditary  traditions 
and  memories  of  the  infantile  but  sturdy  generations. 

And  why,  indeed,  should  a  climatic  crisis  be  regarded 
as  so  incredible  ;  for,  as  a  civic  mass,  they  would  have 
left  no  home  for  merely  a  few,  if  even  somewhat  persistent, 
bad  seasons.  Generation  after  generation  in  prehistoric 
years  must  have  felt  the  gradual  closing  in  of  a  polar 
world,  and  the  forebears  of  these  myth-weavers  of  Avesta 
may  have  been  among  their  number.  Crop  after  crop 
must  have  become  impossible, — as  we  see  them  indeed 
now  failing  in  our  Middle  Europe.  The  herbs,  the  fruits, 
the  cereals,  shrank  and  grew  tasteless  under  the  freezing 
gript;  and  the  'tiller,'  Aryan,  was  obliged  to  turn  south- 
ward seeking  the  summer  zephyrs,  coming  down  and 
ever  farther  down,  from  his  more  northern  home.  That 
region,    which    from    its    moderation    was    once    the  only 

*  Not  that  any  one  has  suggested  such  doubts ;— the  idea  is  now,  I 
believe,  first  mooted. 

t  See  Dr.  Warren's  most  interesting  work  upon  Paradise  Found  (at 
the  Pole). 


The  A  vesta  and  the   Veda.  75 

habitable  territory  for  a  man,  actually  once  around  the 
poles,  became  no  longer  possible,  and  the  moving 
tribes  marched  ever  southward  as  the  seasons  fell, 
led  on,  and  it  may  be  'lured'  on,  by  'vegetation.'  At 
last  they  reached  the  land  soon  called  as  they  were, 
Iran,*  in  memory,  perhaps,  of  their  more  ancient  birth- 
place— a  name  which  they  have  retained,  and  which  has 
survived  among  us  until  now  (see  above)  ; — its  vales 
and  plains  stretched  far  and  wide  before  their  view 
amidst  the  peaks,  south-east  of  the  Caspian,  south-west  of 
it,  and  south  of  it.  A  part  of  them  found  support  enough, 
as  we  observe,  in  the  nearly  middle  Aryan  territories; 
and  a  part  broke  off  in  huge  banks,  or  strolled  away  in 
dribblets  still  farther  south,  down  through  the  Afghan 
passes  ever  south  and  south-east,  till  they  reached  the 
Five  Waters,  the  Punjab,  and  became  the  Sindhusf  or 
Hindus,  the  river-men,  and  with  a  singular  destiny  before 
them.  But  the  old  name  still  held  ; — the  Aryans  were 
aryans  yet. 

Some  South-going  Aryans  lingered  in  the  Far  North, 
almost  as  if  they  were  Iranians. 
For  a  long  time  the    territories  of   the    two    kinsfolk 
touched,  or  almost  touched. 

The  Gandharvas  of  the  Veda,  who  recall  the  Avesta 
name  Gandar(e)va,  were  with  Apsaras,  as  far  north 
as  the  vales  of  Kubha,  or  Kabul.  Not  far  distant  was 
the  Krumu  which  was  the  Ktirum,  and  the  Gomati  which 
was  Gumti  [Gomal),  and  the  Cutudri  which  was  the 
Sutlej\  and  even  the  half-mystic  Rasa  which  was  the 
Ramhd.     As  the  common  native  home  is  named  in  the 

*  Eran  (Spiegel). 

t  The  Greek  form  of  their  present  name,  the  Indians,  rather  than  the 
Sifidians  {sic)  came  through  the  Avesta,  or  at  least  the  Persian :  Hindu 
is  Iranian  as  against  the  Indian  Sindhu  (the  same  word  with  phonetic 
change;  but  how  about  the  Prakrit,  etc.?;  there  I  am  not  at  home). 
This  is  hardly  my  own  original  view ;  yet  see  the  Century  Dictionary  of 
Names,  as  if  there  were  some  hesitation  here. 


76  Our  Ow7i  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Avesta,  so  their  primaeval  history  is  disclosed,  not  told, 
in  both  the  ancient  documents.  It  is  a  history  repeating 
its  predecessors,  as  history  seems  ever  destined  so  to  do, 
working  forward  with  pathetic  effort  in  its  spiral,  returning 
but  not  always,  to  the  selfsame  centre  in  a  devious 
circuit  on  a  beaten  track.  When  they  had  reached 
the  rocks  of  Iran  where  we  left  them  still  undivided,  the 
same  deserts  again  stretched  before  them,  ever  south,  arid 
and  hopeless  as  they  are  to-day ; — but  not  arid,  as  we 
may  believe,  from  the  salts  of  evaporated  seas  alone  ; — 
parts  of  them  were  waste  as  well,  no  doubt,  from  other 
causes,  and  from  the  reverse  of  that  which  first  impelled 
the  Aryans  to  break  up  their  early  borders ; — the  summer's 
drought  became,  at  one  point,  desolating,  for  it  was  not 
sufficiently  relieved  ; — their  chief  struggle  was  for  water. 

The  Azhi. 

Why  did  the  rivers  fall,  and  the  rain  hold  off? — 
Some  power  was  at  work  against  them  in  the  distant 
upland  from  which  the  rivers  rolled,  or  in  the  distant 
heavens  from  which  the  rain-streams  poured.  They 
thought  this  influence  was  personal  and  prseternatural, — 
what  else  could  they  think  ?  ; — some  accursed  being  in 
the  sky  was  busy  and  active,  toiling  to  accomplish  their 
defeat.  Sometimes  they  thought  the  clouds  themselves 
were  outside  walls,*  sometimes  the  limbs  of  some  huge 
animal  they  feared,  shut  in  the  clouds  as  nutriment ; — 
the  dread  dragon-monster  of  their  early  tales  and  terrors 
gave  the  first  outline  to  the  eye  of  their  imagination, 
as  the  boa  constrictor  of  the  South  helped  on  the  image 
there. 

Some  snake-devil  up  above,  both  near  and  far,  was 
winding  his  fell  coils  about  the  cloud-cows  dripping  to 
be  milked.  In  the  Veda  he  was  called  the  Vritra,  the 
'  imprisoner,'  and  so  Verethra  in  Avesta.  His  other 
name    was    Ahi   in    the    one    lore    book,    and    still    more 

*  See  Bergaigne  (?). 


The  Avesta  a7id  the   Veda.  yj 

originally  Azhi  in  the  other.  He  is  six-eyed  and  iripie- 
headed  in  the  one,  six-eyed  and  triple-headed  in  the  other. 
He  mio-ht  have  the  title  Ddsa,  'fiend,'  in  Veda,  and  he  is 
positively  Daha{ka)  (the  same)  in  Avesta. 

His  bellowing  strikes  terror  in  the  one,  we  only  hear 
his  fell  petitions  in  the  other.  His  object  in  the  one 
is  destruction  simply,  and  in  the  other  he  would  'empty 
the  seven  Karshvars  of  the  earth  of  men.'  Apaosha,^ 
withering  drought  fiend,  becomes  his  servant.  The  cloud- 
war  becomes  a  orod-war. 

The  same  thing  is  taking  place  to-day.  Drought  is 
the  murderer  in  large  tracts  of  India,  and  in  Iran  it 
has,  with  other -influences,  in  places  literally  swept  the 
signs  of  human  life  away.  So  of  old  ; — blighted  harvests 
brought  on  famine  ; — dried-up  rivers  exhaled  their  poison, 
the  virus  of  the  reptile  ; — the  cattle  drooped,  the  flocks 
grew  small;  —  the  hardy  camel  pined;  —  and  Indian 
and  Iranian  called  on  the  same  gods,  and  in  hymns 
which  have  long  been  silent,  for  their  help.  As  we 
are  led  to  believe,  they  used  the  very  metres  in  those 
vanished  chants  which  are  still  sacred  now ;  f  and  the 
same  great  deities  took  up  the  contest.  The  Creator  of 
all  was  Ahura  in  the  Avesta,  and  Astcra  (the  same)  in 
Veda.  :|:  There  was  Mithra  among  the  one  set  of  tribes, 
and  Mitra  among  the  others. — The  old  god  Athar,  whose 
form  half  perished  from  the  Rik  (though  reappearing 
later)  was  strong  and  resistless  in  the  sister  creed,  while 
Agni  took  his  place  in  Indian  chants. § — But  the  very 
name  of  the  chief  combatant  of  Azhi  is  Verethraghna, 
the    fiend-smiter    in    the    Avesta,     and     Vritrahan    (the 

*  Cp.  Cushna. 

t  We  judge  so  from  the  metres  of  the  Gdthas  and  of  the  Rik,  and 
from  those  in  other  and  later  songs  which  have  been  left  to  us. 

%  Or  '  an  '  Asura ;  Varuna  is  also  at  times  both  literally  and  construc- 
tively Asiira.  The  Rishis  themselves  hardly  know  when  to  speak  of  an 
Asura  as  a  separate  person,  or  as  designating  the  god-class.  Here  also 
it  was  and  is  impossible  to  be  certain. 

§  He  has  been  in  his  turn  half-forgotten  in  Avesta,  though  the  word  occurs. 


78  Our  Own  Religion  hi  Ancient  Persia. 

same)  in  Veda. — There  was  Gau,  the  kine,  the  prize 
of  warfare  in  both  ;— there  was  Vayu  and  Vclyu  ; — there 
was  Soma  who  set  on  valour  on  the  one  side,  and 
H{a)oma  (the  same)  on  the  other, — till  we  come  upon 
the  elorious  abstracts  which  were  later  the  Archangels 
of  Avesta  (the  Amesha-spentas).  We  have  Rita  (the 
law)  on  the  one  side,  and  Asha  (was  it  arsha  ?),  the  same 
(see  also  ereta),  the  law  on  the  other ; — there  was  Manyu 
{earlier  '  spirit ')  on  the  one  side,  who  was  Mainyu  (spirit) 
on  the  other  ;  * — there  was  Vasumanak,  '  who  had  the  good 
mind't  (in  the  Rik),  and  Vohumanah,  'good  mind,'  in 
Avesta; — there  was  Kshatra,  the  kingly  power,  who 
was  Kkshathra,  kingly  power ; — there  was  Ara77iati,  the 
•  energetic  zeal,'  who  was  Ar{a)maiti,  the  'devoted  mind' ; — 
there  was  Sarvatdtl,  healthful  weal,  who  was  Haurvatatil) 
(the  same) ; — and  there  was  AjJiritatva,  who  was  im- 
mortality, and  ameretatat,  the  deathless  long  life,  here 
and  hereafter.  By  the  side  of  these  there  was  Qraushti, 
'willing  hearing,'  and  Sraosha,   'heedful  listening.' 

The  Demons. 
And  the  same  demons  too  often  fought  against 
the  saints  on  either  side  (indifferently).  There  was 
Ma7iyu,  later  'demon  fury,'  on  the  one  side,  and 
Angra  Mainyu  on  the  other; — there  was  the  Drnh,  a 
harmful-lie-god,  and  the  Drnj,  she-devil,  on  the  other  ; — 
there  was  Drogha  and  Draogha\ — there  were  the  Yatus, 
who  were  Yatus ; — there  was  Rakskas,  demons  on  the  one 
side,  and  raksha-doers  %  on  the  other ; — there  was  the 
Ddnu  and  the  Ddnu.  The  same  Imman,  or  half-human, 
helpers  took  up  the  cause.  Yima  in  his  heroic  character 
is  Yama,  later.% — Trita,  the  mysterious  'third  one'  in  the 

*  Not,  however,  an  Amesha,  more  another  name  for  Ahira,  or  for  his 
chief  servant  above  the  Ameshas. 
t  As  the  name  of  a  Rishi. 
X  Rakhshaiti,  my  suggestion  in  S.B.E.,  XXXI. 
§  See  above  (was  not  the  Avesta  vowel  '/'a  later  false  transmission?). 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  79 

Veda,  is  Thrita  in  Avesta. — In  the  Veda  he  is  primeeval 
before  all  as  the  first  preparer  of  the  Soma,  in  Avesta  he 
is  only  the  third,  if  still  pre-eminent  arranger ;  Traitana 
is  Thraetaona ;  Kavya  Ucana  was  Kavi  Usan.  The 
features  of  the  encounters  are  alike  ; — the  god-war  became 
a  'faith-war.'  Traitana  battles  with  the  Dasa  as  others 
with  the  Ahi\ — his  tribe  name  was  Aptya,  and  so  in 
the  Avesta  it  was  Thraetaona  A tkwya*  'who  smote  the 
same  dragon,  three-jawed  and  with  thousand  jointings]! 
and  of  mighty  strength,  which  Angra  Mainyu,  the  torture- 
god-wrath,  made  against  the  corporeal  world.'  In  India 
both  old  forms  faded,  and  the  Hercules  of  the  Veda 
appeared  ; — Indra  took  up  his  bolts  ; — so  in  Avesta  we  have 
Indra,  misspelt  Andra,  but  in  this  case  turned  to  demon 
like  the  Devas  and  some  others.  \ 

In  Veda  he  drinks  the  soma  to  stir  his  courage  ;  it  is 
of  Trita's  brew  ; — sometimes  he  takes  that  old  kindred  name. 
He  smites  the  Ahi  as  Thraetaona  did  his  monster. — His 
mace  has  a  thousand  points,  Kavya  Ufana  forged  it,  and  is 
there  at  hand  with  it — and  so  in  Avesta  Kavi  Usan  is  on 
the  side  of  Thrita.% 

Men  side  by  side  with  Gods  ahnost  as  Peers. 

Man  not  only  took  part,  but  helped  on  the  gods 
with  equal  energy.  Keresaspa  (in  Avesta)  is  almost  an 
Indra,  and  so  men  help  on,  half-god(-d)ed  throughout, 
in  Veda.     Sacrifice  itself,  as  if  half-deified,  did    much    in 

*  I  would  now  suggest  Awthya  as  of  course,  and  a  corresponding 
change  in  the  analogous  Vedic  form,  as  in  the  texts. 

t  So  I  suggest  an  alternative.     Avesta's  Thrita  is  rationally  '  third.' 

\  See  below,  upon  the  further  divergencies.  We  must  not  forget  the 
5-ishis,  who  assumed  these  god-names  wholesale. 

§  The  influence  of  Avesta  upon  Veda  is  a  great  deal  more  probable 
than  that  of  Veda  upon  Avesta  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  Vedic 
people  came  down  into  India  from  the  north-west,  as  no  one  doubts ; 
— there  the  Vedic  Indians  were  once  pre-Avestic  Iranians  beyond 
all  question  \  yet  far  as  India  was  and  meagre  as  were  the  intercom- 
munications, a  stray  idea  may  well  have  reached  Iran  from  early  Vedic 
Afghanistan. 


8o  Otir  Owfi  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

the  matter  too.  So  also  in  Avesta  :  '  O  Ardvi  Sura 
Anahita*  with  what  offering  shall  I  serve  thee,  that 
thou  mayst  run  down,  that  the  Serpent  slay  thee 
not,  damming  up  thy  streams?'  —  The  Yasna  answers, 
*  with  offering  and  libations ' ;— these  are  the  powers  and  the 
weapons  which  arm  both  defence  and  attack  throughout. 

The  almighty  force  was  fire,  and  in  both  communities 
it  never  faltered.f  as  the  battle  raged.  The  grass 
was  spread, — the  seat  was  made  {barhis  in  the  Veda, 
bares{inan)\  in  Avesta),— the  hymn  was  raised, — the  ear 
was  trained, — the  sticks  twirled  furiously  and  the  sparks 
appeared,— the  fire  came,— the  god  lit  on  his  throne;— 
his  word  went  forth,— the  cloud-flame  fell,  the  lightning 
struck,— and  the  monster  quailed  ; — his  folds  were  burst, 
and  the  showers  loosed,  with  all  the  blessings  which 
they  brought  or  symbolised. 

The  Same  Heroic  Deeds. 

Different  heroes,  both  Indian  and  Iranian,  bring  on  the 
same  salvation  by  the  same  deeds,— and  sometimes  they 
even  take  the  selfsame  names. 

The  half-god  Keresaspa,  as  above,  does  the  same  work 
as  Trita,  and  for  the  matter  of  that,  as  implied,  he  does 
Indra's  too.  This  was  to  be  expected  in  the  successive 
developments  of  myth,  and  it  has  analogies  in  every  ancient 
record  of  the  kind  ; — gods  and  devils,  demons  and  angels, 
borrow  everywhere  each  other's  deeds,  as  do  heroes  and 
their  opposites  ;— and  this  as  if  by  merest  chance  (in  all 

such  lores). 

The  Reason    Why. 

Yet  there  remains  always  the    reason  why  successive 

champions  should  meet  successively  the  selfsame  foe  ; — the 

Demons  work  was  natures  coiirse,  and  so  ever  fresh  as  it 

*  '  Heroic  one  of  spotless  (waters).' 
t  Though  its  name  shifted  back  and  forth  ;  see  above. 
X  But  if  this  form  be  original  the  etymology  must  be  irregular.     In 
all   such   cases    the   word    should   be    rationally   restored;    no     ancient 
document  has  been  handed  down  intact,     -man  is  mere  suffix. 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  8i 

recurred  ; — decade  after  decade, — if  not  year  after  year, — 
the  same  serpentine  power  wrapt  his  encircUng  length 
about  the  rain-clouds,  and  brought  the  famine  on. — How 
could  it  be  possible  that  similar  deeds  done  by  successive 
heroes  could  remain  unsung  ?  ; — the  identity  of  the  results 
would  stereotype  ideas. 

The  Gods  of  Peace. 

And  when  the  war  ceased  for  an  interval,  the  same 
gods  of  peace  ruled  in  the  happier  time.  There  was 
Airyaman  of  Avesta,  'friend  true  to  Airya,'  who  was 
Arya7nan  of  Veda,  and  Nairyosangha,  'blest  of  man,' 
who  was  Nardfansa  ; — there  was  Bagha,  god  of  good  luck, 
who  was  Bhaga  in  the  sister  book ; — there  was  Parendhi, 
o-od  of  riches,  who  was  Puranidhi  in  the  Rik  (though  not 
personified),  until  we  come  upon  a  summing-up  of  favourites 
(favoured  for  good  reasons,  if  only  for  the  moment) ; — and 
they  are  curiously  enough  counted  up  to  the  same  figures 
(thirty-three)  in  both  Veda  and  Avesta,  in  each  division  of 
the  tribes.* 

And  the  same  Htiman  Princes  of  the  Peace  are  in  part 
common  to  both  sides. 

Vivasvant  is  Ya77ids  father,  and  Vivaitghvant  (the 
same)  is  Yimds.\  Yama  is  a  king  of  the  blest,  and  so  is 
Yima  Khsh{a)eta  (in  Avesta).  Some  of  those  who  were 
erstwhile  warriors  were  later  renowned  in  calmer  days.  So 
our  Thrita,  no  longer  spreading  slaughter  (see  above),  is 
now  occupied  in  precisely  the  opposed  direction  ; — he  is 
the  first  physician  ;  :j: — and  so  in  the  Atharvaveda  (he 
wipes  off  sin  or  disease) ; — he  even  gives  elsewhere  to 
the    gods    the    boon    of   slumber ; — in    yet    another   place 

*  In  both  Veda  and  Atharvaveda  we  have  it  on  Sanskrit  side ;  and  so, 
sure  enough,  in  Yasna  (I,  33) ;  not  perhaps  that  the  same  gods  were  actually 
meant  at  all  times  when  the  figures  were  used,  but  the  number  was  once 
emphatically  solemn,  and  the  old  impression  lingered  with  the  relic  of  a 
forgotten  reckoning.    Burnouf  first  noticed  this,  not  Haug,  who  repeats  it. 

t  See  my  notes  above. 

I  Vend.,  XX.     See  also  XXII  for  other  healing. 


82  Our  Own   Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

he  gives  long  life  to  men; — in  yet  another  any  evil 
thing  is  to  be  brought  to  him  to  be  appeased.*  In 
another  he  appears  as  poet.  Kavi  Usan  backed  up  the 
Thrita  in  his  duel,  as  we  saw, — but  he  is  also  engaged  in 
kindlier  work,  and  reinstitutes  great  Agni  as  high-priest, 
leading  the  heavenly  cows  themselves  to  pasture.f  It 
is  another  person,  if  Vafra  Navaza  be  a  person,  who  in 
Avesta  takes  up  the  task  of  Kavi  Usan  (in  the  later  books) 
and  anticipates  air-navigation,  J  for  he  tries  to  fly  to  heaven, 
though  where  does  Kavya  Ucanct  do  the  like  ? — there  are 
plenty  of  mountings  to  heaven. 

Such  are  some  few  of  the  parallels.  Well  indeed  are 
these  Iranian  texts  called  three  parts  Veda,  so  far  at  least 
as  the  tales  they  tell  may  tally.  The  word  itself  too,  Veda, 
is  near  Avesta,  which,  however,  may  be  a  Vista  ^  with  a 
prefixed  a,  -a-  Veda  and  a-v{a)edha  1|  touch  everywhere. 
While  of  the  metres  which  I  mentioned,^  one  of  the  oldest 
and  not  least  beautiful,  Vedic  Trishtup,  survives  in  some 
of  the  choicest  of  Avesta  hymns.  And  these  analogies  tell 
irresistibly  toward  the  argument  for  the  earlier  age  of  even 
the  later  Avesta,  where,  for  the  Iranian  side,  the  analogies 
for  the  most  part  fall. 

*  See  R  v.,  VIII,  47,  13.  t  I?^  V.,  VIII,  23,  17. 

X  I  can,  however,  find  no  exact  parallel  in  the  Veda.  In  a  later  book 
(Bhagavita-gita,  X,  37),  he  is  the  first  of  poets.  He  has  four  sons  in  the 
Mahabharata  (?),  etc.,  etc. 

§  The  same  as  A-vitta,  t  before  /  goes  over  to  s  {st). 

II  V(a)edha  occurs  in  the  Avesta,  but  more  in  the  kindred  sense  of 
'possession.'  According  to  all  analogies  an  Iranian  V{a)edha  might,  how- 
ever, precisely  equal  Veda. 

^  See  above.  The  '  fringes,'  so  to  speak,  of  these  analogies  must  vary, 
considering  the  immense  distances  involved  and  periods  of  time,  with  sparse 
intercommunications.  In  the  case  of  Asura  we  must  also  remember  that 
the  shiftings  of  the  applications  of  the  word  must  be  more  than  usually 
kaleidoscopic,  because  the  word  of  itself  had  originally  so  clear  a  meaning 
as  'God,'  aside  from  all  application  to  a  person; — yet  I  hold  that  its  earlier 
occasional  use  as  of  a  supreme  person  affected  to  some  extent  its  applica- 
tion ever  after.  Its  inverted  use  for  'devil'  or 'devils'  seems  almost  ex- 
clusively personal ; — it  is  applied  to  it,  or  to  them  as  to  a  personal  Satan, 
or  to  a  gang  of  Satons,  so  named. 


The  Avesta  and  the    Veda.  '^l 


THE    ESTRANGEMENT    AND    THE    BREAK.* 

But  amidst  this  mass  of  evidence,  full  as  it  so  evidently 
is,  and  decisive  for  the  unity,  we  come  upon  a  phenomenon 
which  at  the  first  sight  of  it  undoes  it  all. 

[(Internal  differences,  as  we  are  all  too  well  aware,  have 
everywhere  lowered  religious  names,  and  holy  offices  once 
held  most  sacred  fall  to  less  repute  ; — '  unpreaching  pre- 
lates,' let  us  recall,  for  instance,  were  once  not  approved 
by  Puritans,  and  the  chief  titular  Christian  Bishop  is  openly 
called  '  Antichrist '  by  a  large  fraction  of  those  who  profess 
to  worship  the  same  great  Lord; — many  also  who  exalt 
the  '  saints '  with  conscientious  devotion  are  termed 
'idolaters'  by  their  co-religionists,  while  these  in  their 
turn  hurl  back  the  retort  of  'heretic,'  each  party  to  the 
conflict  being  doubtless  both  serious  and  fervent,  while 
each  also  consigns  the  other  without  hesitation  to  the  flames 
of  an  eternal  future. 

It  was  still  more  natural  in  the  first  struggles  of  the 
Faith  with  the  classic  heathenism  for  the  early  Christians 
to  find  '  Jupiter '  a  possessing  devil,  or  to  withdraw  '  Apollo  ' 
through  the  nostril  of  the  neophyte. 

No  facts,  indeed,  would  seem  to  be  more  cruel  than 
such  as  show  the  dearest  gods  of  one  race  made  the  very 
demons  of  the  next)]. 

The  Great  Dethronetnent. 
Yet  where— to  resume — in  the  wide  history  of  religions 
or  religious  peoples,  will  you  find  the  gods  whom  the  very 
men  involved  themselves  once  worshipped, — nay,  the  sup- 
reme chief  one  of  them  all,  long  regarded  as  Creator, — 
at  last  dethroned,— a  god  still  adored  by  their  own  close 
kindred  t— those  of  His  present  defamers  ;— nay,  not  alone 

*  See  East  and  West  of  Bombay  for  March  1902,  and  The  Open  Court 
of  December  1 9 10. 

t  The  kindred  of  the  men  who  now  condemn  them. 

6 


84  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

dethroned, — transformed  \\V^  any  foreign  god  to  fiend,  and 

this  not  only  in  spite  of  their  kinsmen's  unchanging  belief, 

but  in  fact  possibly,  if  not  probably,  because  of  it.     Yet  this 

is  what  stares  at  us  from  every  folio  of  Avesta,  as  from 

many  a  section  of  the  Veda.      Not  only  have  some  of  the 

subordinite  divinities  turned  upon  their  alter-egds,  but  the 

very  name  of  Heaven    itself  is   violated  ; — and  this,  as   I 

regret  to  say,  upon  the  side  of  Iran.      No  name  more  fitted 

to  beneficial  spiritual    powers    could    ever,    as    one    would 

think,  have  fastened  itself  upon  the  receptive  sensibilities 

of  happy  worshippers,  than  that  name  of  the  '  shining  sky  '  ; 

and  Deva  [to  dyu,  dyut)  is,  indeed,    still  used  by  several 

branches  of  the  great  Indo-germanic  family  as  deus,  deity, 

and  the  like,  a  household  word    in    Western    and   South 

Europe  (more  book-word  with  the  Teutons). 

And  so  in  classic  times  as  well,  Zeus  pater  ^-a.^  J ii-piter, 

as  divas  pitar  was   Heaven's    father,  and  yet  it   was  this 

'Heaven'  itself,  Zeus-divas,  which   Iran  used  for  the  gods 

of  Hell ! — a  great  pity,  as  we  may  well  concede  ; — it  might 

indeed  even  shock  us, — but  so  it  remains  the  fact.      From 

the  very  Gathas  on,  throughout  the  old,  the  intermediate, 

and  the  new  Avesta,   throughout    the    period  of  Pahlavi, 

through   that    of   the    exquisite    Persian    literature    (early, 

middle,    and    late),    down    to    this    very    day,    hardly    the 

smallest    trace    of    a    deviation    has    been    discovered    or 

reported.     D(a)eva    and  Vev  have    never  been  made  use 

of  prominendy,  if  at  all, — so  far  as  I  have  observed,  or  can 

remember — in  all  our  surviving  Iranian  to  designate  those 

Holy   Beings    whom    the    ancestors    of   both    Indian    and 

Iranian  once  worshipped  with  the  word  (so  signal  in  this 

use) ! 

Its  Cause. 

And  how  did  this  sad  change  occur,  as  we  must  in  due 
course  inquire? — It  might  assist  our  answer  if  we  first  look 
for  a  moment  at  a  still  greater  profanity,  if  not,  indeed,  still 
greater  blasphemy, — as  we  might  so  term  it, — and  this  time 
still  quite  as  unhappily,  if,  as  was  the  fact,  upon  the  other 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  85 

side.  Astira  became  displaced.  The  Indian  Aryans,  and 
some  of  them  at  an  excessively  early  period,  themselves 
drao-cred  down  this  once  honoured  name  for  the  Supreme 
Spirit  whom  their  own  still  earlier  seers  adored.  *  Astira 
itself  was  changed  by  the  ancestors  of  Indians,  as  by  Indians 
themselves,  and  not  only  changed  but  inverted  in  its  turn, — 
as  in  the  other  case  of  Deva.  There  a  sacred  generic  name 
was  degraded  ; — but  this  was  worse  than  degrading  a  mere 
generic  name.  '  Deva,'  however  glorious,  seldom  meant 
an  individual  deity  till  later  days,*  while  Asura  was  seem- 
ingly at  times  beyond  all  doubt  a  distinct  person,  or  at  least 
rhetorically  so  used,  and  as  such  his  name  was  taken  most 
horribly  in  vain, — at  all  events  as  the  great  god-class.  He 
was  once  the  believer's  father,!  not  only  '  Heaven's  Deva' J 
as  in  the  older  Veda,  but  father  of  the  heroes  that  bear  the 
earth,  §  and  even  of  the  infinite  '  eternals  ' ; — not  man  alone, 
but  '  gods'  bore  hymns  to  him,|l — 'the  offerers  of  the  great 
race  of  Angirases  are  his  servants,  sons  of  Heaven,' IF  so 
three  of  the  First  Adityas  are  his  champions.**  Even  Agni, 
dearest  of  the  gods,  is  born  of  him. ft 

•  Seven-priested  from  of  old,  forth,   forth  he  beameth 
As  in  the  mother's  womb  apart  he  shines, — 
Eye  hath  he  never  closed,   the  watchful,  joyful, 
Since  from  Asura's  loins  he  issued  child.' 

One  would  think  that  Asura's  place  as  a  god — so  far  as 
he  was  so  signally  a  person — was  safe,  if  ever  a  deity's 
possessions  were  ; — but  he  begins  to  lose  it,  and  before  a 
redoubted  rival,  who  is  found  indeed  uniting  with  Heaven 
itself  and  the  wide  Earth  against  him,  Asura, — for  all  bow 

*  Cicero's  deus  was  often  merely  '  the  divine,'  as  was  also  theos. 

t  Not  understanding  '  Varuna'  just  here.     R  V.,  X,  124,  3. 

\  R  v.,  V,  41,  3.     Asura  of  heaven. 

§  R  v.,  X,  10,  2.  II  R  v.,  V,  41,  3. 

\  R  v.,  X,  67,  2,  etc. 

**  R  v..  Ill,  so,  S. 

ft  R  v.,  Ill,  29,  14. 


86  Oitr  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

down  before  the  rising   Indra  (R  V.,  I,  131,    i).     The  full 
celestial  civil  conflict  at  length  breaks  out : — 

•Q   Lord  of  prayer,   Brihaspati,   O   Indra, 
With  thy  hot  bolt  split  through  Asura's  men 
As  thou  of  old  didst  smite  with  daring  fury — 
So  smite  to-day,   O   Indra,  that  fell  fiend!' 

And  this  of  Asura,  erstwhile  the  father  of  both  gods 
and  men  ! 

'O  Indra,  Vishnu,  all  (Jambara's  strongholds 
Ninety-and-nine,  ye  smote,   though  fastened  tight 
A  varchins  hundred,  yea  a  thousand  foemen 
Ye  slew  them  all,  Asura's  thousand  might.' 

At  last  he  is  totally  '  ungod-ed '  (called  'no-god,' 
adevd)  with  his  once  peerless  hosts  : — 

'  Bladeless  the  non-gods  Asuras  oppose  thee, — 
With  hurling  spear,*  O  headlong,  drive  them  hence!' 

And  this  eoes  back  how  early  ?  The  Rishis  foil  their 
tricks, — Atri  defeats  them.  Several  of  the  gods  claim  to 
overshadow  them.  No  fall  could  be  more  signal.  Even 
the  Ddsa,  the  '  fiend'  (see  above),  is  coupled  with  the  name 

(RV.,  X,  138,  3). 

It  is  a  very  remarkable  phenomenon,  look  at  it  in  what- 
ever light  we  may.  (It  is  not  at  all  possible  that  the  word 
'Asura'  was  used  of  evil  beings  arbitrarily  and  with  no 
gradual  departure  from  the  earlier  sacred  use  ; — recall  the 
same  change  with  manyu,  etc.)  And  this  occurred  in 
hymns  sung  by  Rishis  of  the  same  people,  in  the  same 
metres,  and  in  the  selfsame  line  of  priests  (apparently). 
Here  then  is  a  god-name,  spiritually  supreme  in  one  century, 
or  perhaps  even  in  one  decade,  and  yet  not  only  degraded 
but  reviled  in  another  closely  succeeding  period, — and  in 
the  same  country,  among  the  same  people. 

And  so  again  we  have  the  question,  as  of  the  D(a)eva 

*  R  v.,  VIII,  85  (96),  9;  literally  'with  thy  wheel.' 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  87 

name,  thougrh  Asura  is  somewhat  less  familiar.  Let 
us  now  ask  more  closely, — how  did  this  happen?  The 
great  name  Ahtcra,  i.e.  Asura,  held  itself  unrivalled  in  the 
other  land  from  one  end  of  the  Iranian  territory  and  history 
to  the  other ; — it  never  lost  its  supremacy.  Why  did  it  not 
likewise  continue  to  be  supreme  in  India  as  well?  And 
why  did  the  like — only  approximately — parallel  reverse 
take  place  with  the  name  of  D(a)eva  *  as  we  have  seen — 
adored  in  one  accidentally  far-separated  lore — territorially 
separated — and  execrated  with  dynamitic  fury  in  the  other. 
Was  theology  alone  the  evil  cause  in  both  cases  of  this  lost 
sovereignty  ? 

That  the  once  twin  peoples  later  quarrelled  theologically 
on  the  matters  of  ritual  and  creed  none  can  doubt ; — and 
that  their  religious  disagreements  had  something,  as  of  course, 
to  do  with  their  mere  geographical  division  seems  certain. 
In  the  case  of  Asura  this  took  place  not  with  the  division 
between  Indian  and  Iranian  alone,  but  with  the  jarrings 
between  school  and  school  among  the  Indians  ; — there  were 
such  bickerings  beyond  a  doubt,  and  as  usual,  and  this 
even  between  shrine  and  shrine.  To  explain  this  deplor- 
able, but  too  frequently  recurring,  mishap,  we  must,  as  so 
often,  now  go  back  to  the  pettiest  of  all  small  causes.  Some 
poet  in  a  favoured  centre  had  made  too  brilliant  illustrations 
— this  was  the  difficulty  ; — or  some  woes  predicted  by  one 
priesthood  there  had  turned  out  too  strikingly,  though  perhaps 
accidentally,  correct ; — or  again,  more  simply  and  as  a  familiar 
case,  one  community  had  become  too  prosperous,  so  that 
their  especial  patron  deity  must  be  a  little  taken  down.  Such 
was  beyond  all  doubt  the  far-back  secret  of  the  thing. 

So,  low  and  deep,  the  mutterings  began  against  the 
prestige  of  the  now,  alas !  too  loudly  praised  Asura : 
'  Those  vaunted  deeds  of  that  especial  deity,  or  class,  give 
flocks  and  herds  across  yon  river,  or  yon  border '  ;  '  This  is 
the  very  cause,  perhaps,  why  flocks  and  herds  are  dwindling 
here '  \—'  Asura,  once  supreme  for  all  of  us,  is  turning  out 

*  I.e.,  Deva. 


88  Our  Own  Relinon  in  Ancient  Pei'sia. 

to  be  a  party-god  to  the  great  profit  of  those  rivals.'  And 
as  the  negro  first  neglects  and  kiter  pounds  his  fetish,  so 
the  Indians  began  to  drop  Asura  hymns,  then  to  murmur 
in  undertone  some  fragments  in  a  hostile  strain, — till  at  last 
after  some  savage  struggle  they  cast  off  all  reserve,  and 
openly  reviled  the  god  who  could  so  help-on  the  hated 
neighbour,  and  soon  forgot  the  days  when  they  too  raised 
his  name  (in  song  as  sweet  as  any). 

This  was  the  true,  main  motive  of  the  change,  we  may 
depend  upon   it,  as  between    Indian    and    Indian  ;    and — 
take  my  word  for  it — it  is  the  secret  of  half  the  changes  in 
opinions  since.     Could  things  like  this  have  failed  to  help- 
on,  if   not  actually  to  cause    as    well,  the  differences  also 
between  the  men  of  Veda  and  men  of  Avesta  (and  this 
while  they,  the  future   Indians  and  the  original   Iranians, 
still  touched  each  other  in  their  homes),  as  such  like  things 
most    certainly  brought    on    the    same    sort  of   differences 
between  Indians  and  Indians  in  their  southern  settlements, 
also  still  later  on  ?     The  contrary  seems  hardly  possible  ; 
thino-s  like  these  must  have  been  the  causes  here  at  work. 
That  these  grave,  and  ultimately  fatal,  differences  with  all 
their  mournful  but  inevitable  consequences  had  their  actual 
origin    from    anything    like    simple    and    clearly    differing 
radical   intellectual  convictions  stirring   the  very  soul   and 
conscience,    is    unlikely    to    the    last    degree.      Even   the 
precipitation  in  some  of  our  own  great  modern  reforma- 
tions had  its  impetus  from  the  smallest  of  all  trivial  hopes 
or  fears.      No, — it  is  extremely  foolish  to  suppose  that  a 
purely    rational     theological    antagonism    in    opinion    was 
really,  at  that  early  period,  the  moving  cause  of  the  harsh 
events  which  followed  upon    these  subdivisions    in   either 
case.      Theological    rancour — indeed,   to    some    degree    of 
old,  as  I  have  conceded — deepened,  and  become  embittered 
by  every  selfish  instinct    fermenting   in    the  minds  of  the 
great  leaders, — and  this  to  some  degree,  and  as  a  thing  of 
course,    kept    them,    as    they   felt    it,    active    both    in    the 
stream  and  at  the  helm,  and  more  sincere  fanatical  con- 


The  A  vesta  and  the   Veda.  89 

victions  must  have  helped  on  the  conflict  everywhere  and 
throughout, — but  the  mainspring  of  the  conflict  lay,  as 
ever,  in  brute  jea/oitsies. 

As  the  Indo-iranian  tribes  extended,  the  advanced 
settlements  stood  somewhat  too  far  off  from  the  chief 
centres,  and  the  bands  of  inter-racial  connection  became  at 
times  attenuated.  Differing  interests — if  only  in  the  great 
markets  in  the  wider  meaning  of  the  term — could  not  fail 
to  stir  up  discord  ; — unequal  fortunes  nourished  hatred, — 
ereed  orew  furious  as  wealth  g^rew  insolent, — border  friction 
became  more  constant  as  the  country's  sections  grew 
personally  more  and  more  estranged, — bloody  brawls  led 
on  to  still  more  bloody  raids,  and  these  to  remorseless 
inextinguishable  feud, — until  the  long  fratricidal  wars 
began,  and  the  battle-shouts  were  deities.  As  Moslim 
cried  '  Allah,  Allah  ! '  with  terrible  effect,  so  each  side  in 
murderous  affrays  called  on  its  favoured  name.  '  Deva, 
Deva ! '  was  shouted  along  the  one  line,  and  '  Ahura, 
Ahura ! '  rose  fiercely  from  the  other.  And  in  the  roar  of 
the  chorus  the  keener  wit  and  the  nimbler  tongues  *  of  the 
future  Rishis  too  often  wove  the  better  words,  and  silence 
sank  upon  the  ranks  of  Iran.  And  when  victory  came,  with 
its  known  atrocities,  we  can  well  perceive  how  '  Deva,  Deva ! ' 
became  more  feared,  and  if  possible  more  hated  (though  it 
was  once  to  both  a  name  endeared),  while  Ahura  as  Asura 
was  correspondingly  despised  by  the  southern  throngs. 

The  one  side  in  desperate  fury  cried — 

'  Your  kindred,  O  ye  D(a)evas,  are  a  seed  from  the  mind 

polluted  ; 
Who  praise  unto  you  most  offers,  with  the  deed  of  the  lie 

deceiveth  ; 
Advanced  your  stratagems  are,  renowned  in  the  sevenfold 

earth.'  f 

*  The  short  shouts  went  back  on  battle  hymns  ; — recall  the  soul-stirring 
hymns  of  modern  civil  war, 

t  Yasna,  XXXII,  3.     Something  such-like,  or  parts  of  it  in  short  cries. 


90  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancie?it  Persia. 

while  the  other  side  thundered  back  with  hymns  such  as  I 
have  quoted.* 

I  am  convinced  that  this  was  the  explanation  of  the 
stranore  chancres  as  regards  the  ofods  of  each. 

The  Results,  or  some  of  tJiem. 

Victory  was  not  always  on  the  Deva's  side,  and  with 
victory  captives  were  divided  ; — many  a  North-Western  was 
carried  off  towards  India  beyond  a  doubt,  and  some  from 
amono^st  future  Indians  were  draorored  back  to  Iran.  There, 
after  the  sullen  peace,  in  the  New  Avesta,  these  D(a)eva- 
worshippers  became  a  servile  caste  amid  the  subjects  of 
Ahura,  though  in  the  Gathas  we  find  them  still  unbeaten 
and  in  arms.  There,  in  the  New  Avesta,  they  are  at 
home,  domesticated,  and  to  a  degree ,  assimilated,  but 
with  such  scanty  civil  rights  that  their  very  lives  were 
lightly  risked.  A  grim  smile  forces  itself  upon  us  as  our 
eye  runs  down  the  pages  \- — the  form  of  cruelty  is  as  quaint 
as  it  is  merciless  ; — the  tyro-surgeon  might  try  his  virgin 
knife  on  them,  these  D(a)eva  worshippers,  but  on  no 
account  could  he  begin  his  practice  on  a  believer  in  full 
credit.  If  he  'cuts'  three  times,  and  all  three  times  his 
patient  dies,  his  knife  must  rest  for  ever; — only  if  he  cuts 
three  times,  and  all  three  times  his  D(a)eva-worshipper 
survives, — then  only  may  he  proceed  and  '  cut '  the 
orthodox.f 

These  Differences  and  Inversions  only  the  more  actitely 
point  the  Facts  of  Unity  first  noticed. 

Such  murderous  estrangements — as  is  often  elsewhere 
seen — only  heighten  still  more  the  singular  effect  of  the 
phenomenon  of  the  past  agreements  on  which  we  lay 
such  stress,  and  they  set  the  last  seal  to  our  convictions. 
The  ancient,  but  alas !  now  too  often  spiteful,  sisters,  were 
once  almost  as  one,  quite  members  of  a  family.     If  the  chief 

*  The  hymns  behind  the  battle-shouts. 
Vend.,  VIIT,  36  (94)  ff. 


The  Avesta  and  the    Veda.  91 

gods  (see  above)  lost  their  hold  among  the  Indian-aryans, 
how  much  more  was  it  to  be  expected  that  brother  deities 
of  lesser  magnitude  in  the  two  great  race  divisions  should 
lose  their  caste,  and  that  among  them  even  some  leading — 
if  still  somewhat  jz^(5-chieftain — gods  should  suffer  similarly 
after  they  have  become  the  pet  saviours  of  one  or  of 
the  other  of  the  angry  sides  ?  *  Mainyu,  '  spirit,'  is  in- 
different— as  a  word — in  Avesta,  needing  an  adjective  to 
define  it  more  closely  as  the  'evil,'  while  it  sometimes 
occurs  alone,  and  often  to  designate  a  '  good  '  deity.  And 
so,  at  first,  as  said,  in  Veda  ;  it  was  '  good  '  enough — though 
standing  quite  alone — as  *  zeal '  or  '  forceful  passion  '  not  yet 
personified,  but,  like  the  other  names,  as  seen  above,  it  became 
at  last,  not  mere  'spirit '  as  in  the  other  lore,  but  'spirit  anger' ; 
and  so  at  times  personified,  while  in  Avesta  it  is  never  the 
Supreme  Devil  without  its  adjunct  angra  ;  see  above. 

Then  there  were  the  Nasatyas,  who  were,  under  a  still 
higher  name,  the  Asvins  of  the  Veda ;  but  Nahhaithya 
(the  same)  is  a  demon  in  Avesta.  Whether  the  Angirases 
of  Veda  are  the  Angra  of  Avesta  is  much  more  doubtful. f 

Then  the  Gandharvas,  gods  of  sheen-mist,  are  so  high 
in  the  Veda  that  they  even  put  the  stimulating  power 
into  so7na  (sacred  drink)  \  beside  very  many  other  mighty 
functions, — but  in  Avesta  Gandarva,  once  named  aside 
from  this,  attacks  the  h{a)oina  (which  is  soma),  as  a  D{a)eva- 
demon  attacks  a  sacred  object  in  an  opposing  book. 

Kalpa  is  the  holy  rite,  among  many  other  momentous 
items  in  Veda,  but  the  Karpans  are  a  hated  band  in  the 
Avesta.      Even  great  Indra,  as  said,   was    a    devil  in  the 

*  If  ' D{d)evas'  carried  havoc  among  the  Iranians  in  conflict  with 
Indians,  no  better  reason  could  be  furnished  for  their  neglect  and  final 
detestation,  and  so  of  Asura  among  the  future  Indians,  not  only  in  civil 
war  between  the  neighbouring  Indian  tribes,  but  in  some  frontier  battles  with 
Iranians,     Of  course,  as  I  have  said,  the  matter  by  no  means  stopped  at  this. 

t  For  the  Angirases,  some  think,  are  mentioned  in  a  good  sense  in  early 
Persian ;  but  see  below  as  to  changes  in  the  same  old  usage. 

X  Apparently  the  first  there  discovered  intoxicating  liquid,  and  from 
that  quality  deemed  to  be  supernatural. 


92  Our  Own  Religion  i7i  Ancient  Persia. 

Iranian  lore,  and  little  wonder,  though  he  fights  the  Dragon 
just  as  the  A  vesta  champions  did. 

Ithyejah  is  a  demon  in  A  vesta,  but  tyajah  i^-s)  (the  same) 
is  often  not  an  evil  in  the  Veda.  Buiti  is  a  demon  in  the  one 
lore,  but  bhfiti  means  '  plenty '  in  the  other  ;  so  Bujin  is  a 
demon  in  the  one,  and  bJmji  means  '  enjoyment '  in  the 
other.  Other  sub-gods  and  sub-devils  fall,  or  rise,  on 
one  side  or  the  other, — but  the  list  would  tire  us.  Among 
the  heroes,  too,  are  many  changes.  Kriqanu  shoots  to  save 
the  soma,  bringing  down  its  keen  foe,  the  hawk  ;  but  in 
Avesta  Kei^esani  is  an  enemy  of  H{a)o7na,  which  is  Soma. 
Gotema,  and  his  progeny,  are  singers  and  heroes  in  the 
Veda,  but  G{a)otema  is  cursed  in  the  Fravardin  Yasht,  etc. 

One  item  aside  from  personalities  should  be  noticed. 
Curiously  enough  Dakyu,  the  marked  name  for  the  provinces 
in  the  Avesta,  is  Dasyu,  which  is  used  for  hostile  tribes  in 
the  Rik,  and  here,  indeed,  we  are  so  startled  by  the  coin- 
cidence that  we  are  almost  forced  to  see  in  the  one  a  pointed 
reference  to  the  other.  These  Dasyus  mentioned  in  the 
Veda  were  tribes  that  did  not  worship  Devas,  and  they  are 
supposed  to  have  been  the  savage  aborigines  whom  the 
Aryan  Indians  forced  farther  back,  as  the  advancing  white 
man  drove  the  red  man  elsewhere. 

But  were  those  who  formed  this  opinion  aware  of  the 
familiar  Iranian  name?  Those  Dasyus  were  not  only 
unbelievers,  and  non-sacrificers,  but  '  people  ivitk  other 
rites.'  What  rites  had  savages  which  could  raise  them  to 
the  rank  of  rival  worshippers  ?  * 

To  finish  with  analogies.  As  Asura  turned  demon 
among  the  Indians  (or  future  Indians),  and  Manyu  with 
him  ; — as  D(a)evas  were  once  gods  in  Iran,  in  times  before 
the  Gathas,   so  in  the  same  lore  we  have  from  the  same 

*  Some  doubt  that  the  etymology  here  is  identical  with  that  of  Dasyu. 
If  the  Indian's  dasyu  had  an  evil  origin  in  India  itself,  this  may  have  been 
overlooked  by  the  Iranians.  If  Indian  enemies  called  Iranian  regions 
Dasyu  like  their  own  evil  dasyu,  this  may  have  been  sufficient  cause  for 
Iran  to  accept  the  name  in  a  better  sense. 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  93 

cause  a  good  and  evil   Vaytt,  and  among  heroes  with  their 
families  a  oood  and  evil  Kavi,  and  the  like. 

These  crossings  and  recrossing  of  gods  and  sub-gods, 
heroes  and  head-knaves,  from  one  side  to  the  other  in  the 
celestial  or  infernal  minuet,  do  not  affect  the  argument. 
Let  me  again  assert  it ; — Veda  and  Avesta  are  really  one  ; 
and  I  add  the  chief  item  here. 

Not  only  are  the  mythologies,  the  echoes  of  past  history, 
and  the  proper  names  of  gods  and  heroes  the  same,  with  the 
names  of  countries.^  the  langicages  being  recognisably  allied, — 
but  the  entire  essence  of  the  tivo  dialects  are  closely  identical 
with  only  such  phonetic  variations  as  might  be  expected ; — 
even  these  largely  vanish  as  we  learn  more  and  more  how  to 
decipher  the  Avesta  alphabet.  Their  very  irregularities 
coi^respond  most  strikingly,  like  their  laws.  This  clinches 
all  the  other  illustrations. 

Said  the  greatly  distinguished  Professor  Oldenberg,* 
then  of  Kiel  :  '  The  languages,  Avestic  and  Vedic- 
Sanskrit,  are  nearer  to  each  other  than  were  the  dialects 
of  Greece  near  to  each  other,  and  even  nearer  to  each 
other  than  the  Veda  is  to  its  own  Sanskrit  "  Epic." '  \ 

This  seems  to  us,  at  the  first  sight  of  it  and  hearing  of 
it,  to  be  hardly  credible,  but  what  is  really  more  wonderful 
s  that  it  is  so  little  known.  It  is  actually  the  fact  that  we 
have  a  mass  of  documents  from  the  remote  north-west 
which  are  verily  twin-sister  to  the  south  and  south-east 
Sanskrit, — and  not  to  the  later  type  of  it,  but  to  the  earlier ; 
to  the  Vedic  rather  than  to  the  post-Vedic ; — and  this  is 
true  also  even  of  the  later  parts  of  the  late  Avesta.  There 
is  one  main  feature  of  identity  to  which  we  should  never 
allow  ourselves  to  grow  accustomed ; — the  metres  are  the 
same,  and  the  most  beautiful  of  all,  as  said  above,  pre- 
dominated in  the  hymns  of  the  original  united  home. 

*  One  of  the  translators  of  S.B.E. 

t  See  my  communication  to  the  Times  of  bidia  under  date  of 
July  28,  1909.  This  gentleman.  Professor  Oldenberg,  was  quoting  a 
chapter  of  my  own  in  Roth's  Festgruss,  in  which  I  had  endeavoured  to 


94  Oil}'  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Which  holds  the  Claim  to  he  the  more  Original? 

As  to  which  side  of  the  two  bears  the  fullest  traces  of 
their  common  origin  is  not  so  easy  to  decide.  Now  the 
older  forms  fore-gather  in  the  Avesta,  now  in  the  Indian, 
— but  that  all  are  remotely  ancient  as  terms  in  Indo- 
germanic  speech  no  expert  anywhere  has  doubted, 

I  refrain  from  further  items  ; — it  seems  clear,  indeed, 
without  more  said,  that  Avesta  is  nearly  Veda  in  history, 
features,  language,  and  metres. 

The  Impossibility  of  Later  Fabrication. 

If  so, — to  return  to  our  first  question,* — how  can  its 
greatest  and  oldest  part  be  the  cunning  product  of  the 
AuQ-ustan  aee? — and  on  Persian  soil  where  the  Avesta 
language  had  been  dead  for  centuries  ?  A  dead  speech 
can  live  in  literature,  and  Kalidasa  could  speak  no 
Sanskrit,!  writing  in  a  left-off  lingo,  but  it  would  be 
hazardous  to  postulate  too  suddenly  the  same  conditions  of 
thinofs  for  ancient  Iran  as  for  less  ancient  India.  The 
scenes  presented  in  the  old  Avesta,  the  Gathic,  teem  with 
intellectual  life  indeed,  rough  and  severe,  and  they  do  not 
show  a  hyper  -  cultivated  finesse.  The  Gathas  almost 
surpass  the  credible  in  sublimity  of  tone,  their  age  and 
place  considered, — but  in  view  of  the  later  over-elaborated 
ideas  of  India  they  betray  a  too  unsuspicious  view  of  life, 
and  we  doubt  whether  the  men  that  wrote  them  knew 
the  world  too  well.  Not  even  in  the  latest  Avesta,  or 
post-Avesta,  fragments  down  to  the  time  when  Avesta 
could  have  been  no  longer  spoken,^  do  we  see  the  smallest 
trace  of  any  such  malign  capacity  as  could  forge   the  old 

turn  the  forms  of  Zend  into  those  of  Sanskrit ;  see  his  Religion  des  IVeda, 
p.  27.  No  Scotsman,  justly  proud  of  his  rich  native  speech,  will  take 
offence  when  I  use  it  as  an  apt  illustration, — Avesta  is  nearer  Veda  than 
Scotch,  with  all  its  genius,  is  near  to  English. 

*  Let  the  reader  not  forget  that  these  Lectures  were  separately 
delivered. 

t  So  some  think.  J  As  a  vernacular. 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  95 

hymns,  working  up  a  mass  of  broken  allusions  which  depict 
in  passing  scenes  too  often  far  from  pleasing,  scowling 
with  party  passions,  and  all  directed  to  one  single  aim.* 

//  Genuine,  a  Later  Date  for  Them  is  Unthinkable. 
The  fabrication  of  such  productions  as  the  Gathas 
would  betray  its  origin  in  every  line,  while  as  to  the 
seemingly  still  open  possibility  that  they  were  late  and 
yet  genuine,  it  hardly  deserves  to  be  discussed.  If  there 
was  a  Vishtdspa  at  the  time  of  Christ,  a  Frash{a)oshtra 
and  a  Zarathushtra,  they  could  not  possibly  have  then 
written  pure  old  Aryan  with  the  very  names  still  perfect, 
and  with  the  whole  cast  and  colouring  such  as  it  lies 
before  us. 

Either — entirely  unlike  the  rest  of  the  Avesta — they 
describe  in  their  vehemence  scenes  which  were  actually 
transpiring,  and  sentiments  that  were  personally  felt,  or 
else  somebody  made  them  up  to  imitate  the  half-baffled 
fury  of  a  group  of  leaders  struggling  in  a  religious-political 
crisis.  This  last  would  call  for  a  letter-miracle  ; — as  said 
above,  and  the  age  for  that  was  past  (or  never  had  been).t 
Nobody  living  high  up  in  the  hills  of  sparse  Iran  could 
well  have  worked  up  a  fiction  such  as  that.  It  would  have 
been  a  masterpiece  immense.  Such  is  the  state  of  the 
case.  There  is,  however,  always  the  one  main  result 
indeed  which  nothing  here  affects. 

We  can  offer  to  inquiring  applicants  in  the  Avesta 
some  of  the  most  delicate,  as  well  as  momentous,  sug- 
gestions in  ancient  literature.  With  the  exception  of  a 
frequent  solecism,  the  passages  are  all,  one  after  the  other, 
but  little  disputed  as  to  literal  terms  in  their  primal  sense. 
It  is  here  the  'last  step'  which  costs  as  to  the  exact 
point,  and  not  the  first.  Our  doubts  are  great  indeed  as 
to  the  precise  turn  of  the   detailed  ideas   intended  by   the 

*  The  victory  of  a  bold  political-religious  party  in  the  struggle  for  a 
throne ;  so  we  must  fully  reconstruct  from  the  plain,  if  isolated,  texts. 
t  See  above  in  the  previous  sections. 


96  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

composer  to  be  expressed  ;  and  it  is  here  that  we  specialists 
consume  each  other ; — but  they  are  next  to  nil  as  to  pre- 
liminary elucidations,  and  the  cruces  often  fall  in  dependent 
parts  of  sentences,  ivIiicJi  might  actually  often  be  left 
tmrendered  with  little  loss  to  the  main  theme. 

No  one,  as  I  suppose,  has  ever  denied  in  any  tongue 
this  extraordinary  elevation  of  sentiment  in  those  most 
ancient  pieces  of  the  Avesta,  silly  as  some  of  its  later 
excrescences  may  be,  nor  does  any  one  question  the 
marvellous  subtlety  of  those  distinctions  as  '  to  thought 
and  word  and  deed.'  The  grouping  of  the  Ameshaspentas 
alone  is  wonderful,  for  they  mean  God's  attributes  now 
personified  as  the  archangels,  and  again  still  denoting- 
characteristics  implanted  in  His  people,  with  the  result 
of  healthful  weal  and  deathless  long-life  ^^  (also  much 
personified),  but  resulting  in  an  especially  subjective  future 
state.  And  all  these  elements,  instinct  as  they  are  with 
religious  vitality,  have  again  strange, — and  yet  not  so 
strange  to  say, — their  traces  in  the  Veda. 

We  may  remember  the  man  in  the  fiction  f  who 
objected  to  Semitism  as  'too  much  immortality,'  etc. 
Little  did  he  know  that  it  was  far  more  Aryan  than 
Semitic.  While  the  Hebrew  exile  had  a  Saddusaic  faith 
with  few  glimpses  towards  the  'other  side,'  he  came  back 
from  his  Persian  East  with  a  soul  all  moved  with  futurity. 
His  God  took  closer  notice, |  and  his  Devil  had  more  form. 
His  Judgment  was  to  be  forensic,  and  he  came  prepared 
to  write  the  Daniel  piece,  with  many  more.  His  spirit,  the 
Iranian's,  was  to  be  lashed  indeed  (if  bad)  hereafter,  but 
it  was  by  his  own  evil  personal  emotions,  and  his  pangs  were 
to  be  '  bad  thoughts  and  words  and  deeds '  ;  while  zephyrs 
of  aromatic  fragrance  were  to  meet  his  soul  if  blest,  as  it  left 
the  lifeless  clay  for  the   Bridge  of  the   Discriminator  and 

*  See  the  first  Lecture. 

t  Was  this  in  Mr.  DisraeU's  Lothair  ? — see  my  letter  to  the    Times  of 
India  of  September  24,  1909. 
X  Spiritual  notice. 


The  Avesta  and  the   Veda.  97 

the  Last  Assize.  In  the  approach  to  these  a  beautiful  form 
was  to  appear  which  was  declared  to  be  '  his  own  religious 
nature,'  or,  as  some  would  read,  '  himself  ;  and  she  would 
answer  to  his  bewildered  question  :  '  I  am  thy  conscience, 
thy  good  thoughts  and  words  and  deeds,  thy  very  own.' 
Still  dazed,  though  not  alarmed,  the  soul  would  proceed 
under  her  benediction  till  it  came  before  the  '  Throne  all 
golden,'  where  Vohumanah,  like  the  Son  of  God,  arises  to 
hail  and  reassure  it  ; — souls  of  the  holy  dead  throng  to  meet 
it ; — the  Almighty  intervenes  to  spare  it  painful  reminis- 
cences ; — and  it  enters  a  heaven  of  '  o;ood  thouohts  and 
words  and  deeds.'  But  this  is  Avesta,  and  by  no  means 
Veda.* 

*  See  these  points  more  copiously  presented  in  the  first  Lecture. 
Such  particulars  require  frequent  re-introduction,  as  their  importance  is 
paramount  in  the  history  of  the  moral-religious  development. 


FIFTH    LECTURE. 

{An  Interlude.) 
'GOD    HAS    NO    OPPOSITE.'* 

A  Serinonette  from  the  Persian. 

We  have  all  of  us  noticed  that  ideas  develop  not  so  much 
in  circles  as  in  spirals.  We  find  the  old  thoughts  coming 
again,  as  history  unfolds  itself,  but  they  always  reappear 
increased.  This  is  perhaps  as  apparent  as  anywhere  in  the 
familiar  argument  by  which  we  try  to  harmonise  for  our- 
selves the  blemishes  which  we  observe  everywhere  in  our 
personal  destiny  and  in  that  of  others — that  is  to  say,  in 
the  argument  by  which  we  accept  these  miseries  on  the 
score  of  antithesis. 

Hegel,  and  Fichte  before  him,  used  this  procedure  more 
fully  than  others  among  moderns  ;  but  devout  clergy,  whose 
religion  no  longer  includes  a  cold  acquiescence  in  human 
sufferings,  have  often  urged  upon  their  hearers  as  a  consola- 
tion the  necessity  of  evil  to  the  development  of  the  good, 
of  sorrow  to  the  possibility  of  happiness. 

Obvious  as  such  thoughts  may  be,  and  vital  as  they 
certainly  seem  to  all  men  in  their  attempts  to  smooth  out 
the  wrinkles  on  the  face  of  things,  we  little  expected  to  find 
them  expressed  to  a  nicety  at  such  a  time  as  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  in  such  a  place  as  Persia  ; — and  it  is  equally 

*  This  little  piece,  now  here  re-edited  or  re-printed  for  the  fifth  time, 
was  suggested  to  me  some  years  ago  by  a  fresh  consideration  of  the 
doctrines  of  rational  dualism  as  set  forth  in  the  Pahlavi  literature.  See 
the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Review  for  July  1897,  pp.  103-110.  See  also  The 
Open    Court   of   1910;  East  and    West,    Bombay,   January    1911;    The 

Parsi  of  1911. 

98 


'  God  has  no  Opposite. '  99 

startling  to  see  their  very  detail  worked  out  in  a  style  which 
reminds  us  of  the  much-praised,  if  sometimes  belittled,  philo- 
sopher  of  Stuttgart*     The    Masnavi  is  the  Bible  of  the 
Persians,  and  Jelalu-d-din  Rilmi  is  their  apostle  of  the 
Prophet.     No  book  of  antiquity  or  modern  days  is,  all  things 
considered,  more  remarkable  than   his   production.     Wit, 
humour,  poetry,  and  rhyme  express  its  sometimes  postpran- 
dial pantheism,  and  these  are  offset  with  conceptions  which 
are  often  sublime  and  a  piety  which  was  doubtless  sincere. 
When  he  comes  to  philosophical  hair-splittings  in  the  style 
of  the  mystics  he   is  very  acute,  although,   as  he  himself 
confesses,   he  often  sews  himself  up.     On  this  matter  of 
antithesis  he  is  especially  rich,  and  he  gives  us  in  many  a 
place  *  Hegelianism  before  Hegel.'     Here  is  a  bit  of  his 
doctrine  of  limit : — 

'  Errors  occur  not  without  some  truth.  If  there  were 
no  truth,  how  could  error  exist  ?  Truth  is  the  Night  of  Power, 
hidden  among  other  nights  in  order  to  try  the  spirit  of  every 
night.  Not  every  night  is  that  Night  of  Power,  nor  yet  is 
every  one  devoid  of  power.  If  there  were  no  bad  goods  in 
the  world,  every  fool  might  be  a  buyer,  for  the  hard  act 
of  judging  would  be  easy  ; — and  if  there  were  no  faults 
one  man  could  judge  as  well  as  another.  If  all  were 
faulty,  where  would  be  the  skill  ? — If  all  wood  were 
common,  where  would  be  the  aloes  ? — He  who  accepts 
everything  is  silly,  and  he  who  says  that  all  is  false  is  a 
knave.  ..." 

*  Discern  form  from  substance,  O  son,  as  lion  from 
desert.  When  thou  seest  the  waves  of  speech,  know  that 
there  is  an  ocean  beneath  them.  Every  moment  the  world 
and  we  are  renewed.  Life  is  like  a  stream,  renewed  and 
ever  renewed '  (compare  Hegel's  '  All  is  flow,'  as  borrowed 
from  Heraclitus).  '  It  wears  the  appearance  of  continuity 
or  form  ; — the    seeming  continuity   arises    from    the   very 

*  Hegel  was  born  in  Stuttgart,  where  a  marble  slab  bearing  his 
name  is  set  in  the  facing  of  the  house  which  claims  to  be  his  birth- 
place. 


lOO  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

swiftness  of  the  motion  (p.  3) ;  a  spark  whirled  round  has 
the  appearance  of  a  circle.'  * 

He  expresses  the  principle  of  this  on  page  31,  book  i. 
Here  he  begins  and  slowly  works  his  way  up  to  a  state- 
ment so  o-reat  as  nearly  to  silence  us  with  respect  for  him. 
Commencing  with  the  usual  instance  of  light  and  colour, 
he  croes   on :     *  And    so    with    mental    colours.     At    night 
there    is    no    light,     and    so    no     colour, — but     by    this 
we   know    what  light   is,— by  darkness.     Opposite  shows 
up  opposite,  as  the  white  man    the   negro  ;— the  opposite 
of    light    shows    us    what    is    light  ;— hence    colours    are 
known  by    their    opposites.      God  created  pain  and  grief 
to  show  happiness  through   its    opposite.\—W\^^t.x\    things 
are  manifested  thus.'     And  then  come  the  (to  a  scholastic) 
mao-nificent    words,    '  God  has   no   opposite ;    He    remains 
hidden:     God  has  no  opposite;   He  is  all-inclusive.     We 
are  all  of  us  a   litde  pantheistic  nowadays,— although    on 
Hec^el's  law  we  may  still  claim  to  be  '  orthodox  ' ; — and  who 
that  thinks  has  not  been,  or  will  not  be,  mentally  moved  by 
the  conception  of  that  inclusiveness.     '  He  has  no  opposite.' 
All  that  exists,  exists  through   His  will,  and  has  ever 
so  existed.  %     The  discoveries  of  physical  science,  the  still 
more  far-reaching  ones  of  the  purely  mental,  only  define 
His  indefinableness,  and  make  Him  greater. 

He  has  no  opposite, — not  in  the  realms  of  the  moral 
idea,— not  in  the  close  distinctions  of  the  exact  or  the  quasi- 
exact  sciences, — not  in  the  physical  astrologies  of  the  skies, 

not  in  the  range  of  mathematics  surpassing  imagination, 

nor  in  the  scope  of  aesthetics,  which  are  as  minute  as  they 

are  expanded.  The  telescope  and  the  microscope  are  as 
powerless  as  is  that  world  of  sensibility  which  is  called  into 
life  by  music  or  colour.— Nowhere  is  He  arrested  or 
described.      Sorrow  cannot    say   to    Him,    '  Here    is    your 

*  Compare  book  ii.  page  165.  I  have  not  followed  Mr.  Wynfield's 
most  impressive  and  effective  translation  literally,  but  I  have  preferred  it  to 
others. 

t  The  italics  are  mine.  X  Save  moral  evil. 


'  God  has  no  Opposite'  lot 

limit,'  nor  Pain  declare,  'Me  you  never  made.'*  Even 
the  old  conceptions  of  future  torment  which  exist  clear  and 
distinct  as  ideas  at  least,  almost  as  dreadful  as  the  supposed 
realities  ; — nothing, — nothing  is  without  Him,  or  so  opposed 
as  to  define  Him  ; — He  has  no  opposite.  But  He  has  detail, 
if  we  might  so  express  ourselves.  He  has  no  opposite,  but 
His  actual  deeds  and  attributes  are  made  up  of  them.  He 
can  never  be  defined, — but  we  can  approach  a  definition.  All 
the  thronging  results  of  science  may  be  said  to  be  the  dis- 
coveries of  *  opposites.'  Every  opposite  found  out  by  brain, 
or  eye,  or  glass,  or  measure, — every  tool  with  its  adapted 
edge,  every  structure  in  the  subdivision  of  mechanics,  is  an 
added  item  in  the  rearing  of  that  great  edifice  made  up  of 
differences  out  of  which  we  approach  Him.  Without  the 
recognition  of  difference  no  consciousness  can  exist,  and 
the  pang  of  misery  is  the  actual  condition  to  the  thrill  of 
rapture  and  the  calm  of  peace. 

Surely  it  is  a  consoling  as  well  as  an  impressive  thought 
to  the  thinker,  that  notwithstanding  the  conflicts  in  his 
mental  processes  he  does  not  think  in  vain, — that  to  the 
universe  of  opposites  on  which  he  works  there  is  a  unity 
towards  which  he  may  indefinitely  progress.!  '  God  has 
no  opposite  '  ; — it  gives  consolation  to  the  doer,  for  he 
knows  that  every  result  which  he  brings  forth,  sharply 
facing  either  menace  or  defect,  brings  him  nearer  to  the 
Harmonised.  Well  may  we  accept  the  'pulse  of  thought,' 
'the  grasp,'  'the  split,'  'the  combination.' ;[:  What  con- 
solation, above  all,  it  gives  the  obstructed ! — How  oppositions 
tend  to  make  us  doubt ! — How  can  there  be  a  purpose  in 
so  much  treason,  such  equivocation,  and  such  oppression  as 
we  see? — How  is  it  possible  that  there  can  be  anything  so 
mean  ?  Surely  here,  if  anywhere,  is  God's  Opposite.  Yet 
even  here  the  old  Persian's  word  holds  good.      God  means 

*  Except  the  moral  evil. 

t  Compare  Kant's  'Ad  Indefinitum.'     (Or  was  this   an  unconscious 
joke  ?) 

}  Compare  Hegel's  '  Begriff,  Urtheil,  Schluss,' 


102  Ou7'  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

the  caitiff  as  the  only  being  that  can  define  the  good, — 
thouo-h  He  may  neither  have  created  nor  permitted  *  him  ; — 
He  uses  his  results,  as  He  does  all  things, — the  evil  for  a 
supreme  purpose.  That  good  is  somewhere,  and  all  of  us 
will  be  sure  some  day  to  find  it  out.  God  has  no  opposite, 
and  He  perhaps  never  makes  us  more  acutely  sensitive  to 
His  goodness  than  when  He  permits  us  to  recoil  and  with 
disgust  from  what  seems  the  contradictory  opposite  of  all 
that  He  can  be. 

*  Here  is  the  great  crux,  with  its  seemingly  inscrutable  contradictions, 
which  I  make  no  attempt  to  solve.     See  Lectures  XII  and  XIII. 


SIXTH    LECTURE. 

THE  SUPPOSED  AND  THE  REAL  '  UNCERTAINTIES  '  OF  THE 
GATHAS  ; THEY  ARE  CIRCUMSCRIBED  BY  INCONTRO- 
VERTIBLE   CLEARNESS.* 

[(To  State  our  case  here  more  plainly  at  the  outset : — 
there  are  two  well-defined  leading  issues  in  Gathic  studies, 
as  in  some  other  leading  branches  of  research,  each  of 
great,  if  differing,  importance  :  one  is  the  moral-theological, 
and  the  other  is  the  merely  literary-aesthetic.  The  first 
interest  is  obviously  paramount,  because  it  lies  at  the 
foundation  of  the  history  of  ethics  ; — if  even  all  the  doubt- 
ful terms  in  the  Gathas  which  express  literary  or  aesthetic 
point  were  stricken  out,  this  moral  element  would  still 
remain  untouched. — The  other  points  possess  that  same 
artistic  value  which  attaches  to  the  complete  aesthetic 
treatment  of  all  important  subjects,  ancient  or  modern. 
To  put  these  crucial  factors  into  focus  is  here  our 
purpose.)] 

On  the  many  branches  of  Oriental  research  all  serious 
authorities  are  sure  to  differ, — as  indeed  upon  all  specialities 
of  whatsoever  scope, — but  it  is  always  a  little  difficult  to 
understand  just  why  Avesta  studies  should  be  so  often 
especially  branded  as  bristling  with  the  '  inscrutable.'  And 
there  was  indeed  at  one  time  a  most  extraordinary  element 
of  hindrance,  which  to  one  unaccustomed  to  the  facts 
seems  fatal  to  all  serious  investiq;ation  of  the  matter.      I 


'J5 


*  Thus,  as  ever,  recalling,  expanding,  and  repointing  what  has  been 
necessarily  already,  but  less  prominently,  mentioned,  or  implied  above  in 
the  other  Lectures  once  separately  delivered. 

103 


I04  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Pe^'sia. 

state    it    fully    as    follows    for   an    obvious   reason.     As   is 
universally    understood,    all    important    texts    should    be 
approached   only  after   and  with    the  mastery  of   the  ob- 
viously essential  materials  for  exegesis  ; — but  the  Pahlavi 
Commentaries  upon  the  Yasna  which  actually  grew  out  of 
the  Yasna  itself,  and  therefore  possess  the  most  imperative 
of  all  claims  to  a  hearing,  have  been  handed  down  to  us 
in  an  alphabet  in  comparison  with  which  that  of  Assyriology 
is  lucid.     Owing  to  this  initial  disadvantage,  some  justly 
impatient  adventurers  two  or  three  decades  ago  felt  forced 
to  advance  with  many  an    interesting  and    valuable    sug- 
gestion, and  interpreted  the  Avesta  without  its  daughter. 
We  might  clearly  and  at  once  cross  off  these  parties  from 
our  score, — did  they  really  any  longer  exist, — but  at  this 
present  time  there  is   scarcely  any  longer  a  single  writer 
of  this  description  to  be  found.      No  serious   person  now 
disputes  the  fact  that  the  Pahlavi,   Persian,  and  Sanskrit 
Commentaries  teem  with  valuable  indications  at  every  line, 
having  given  us  all  our  first  knowledge  of  Avesta  grammar, 
anticipating  our  finest  re-discoveries,  while  they  unfortun- 
ately also  launch  out  into  the  impossible  as  to  both  terms 
and  syntax  everywhere  throughout.    Such  is  the  character  of 
all  such  ancient  '  targums '  themselves  written  over  or  re- 
written by  every  later  generation.     We  have,  however,  at 
last  in  so  far  deciphered  the  Avesta-pahlavi  alphabet  as  to 
find  incisive  elements  of  the  Pahlavi  alphabet  in  our  later- 
formed  beautiful  Avesta  alphabet  itself;— and  so  we  have 
finally  at  least  become  more  seriously  aware  as  to  what  both 
our  cherished  certainties  and  our  dreaded  '  uncertainties '  in 
Pahlavi  and  Avesta  really  are.     As  to  those  of  the  Gathas, 
these  difficulties  arise  from  one  of  the  strangest  particulars 
in  literature,   when   we    take    into    consideration    the    vast 
historical  importance  of  the  interests  here  involved.     Every- 
body has  heard  of  the  Ameshaspends  of  Persia,  with  the 
resonant  name  of  their  enouncer,  and  many  know  that  they 
were  worshipped  throughout  that  vast  Empire,  signalling  the 
deepest  personal  religious  principles  for  centuries.     Having 


The  'Uncertainties'  in  the  Gatha.  105 

even  become  familiar  to  the  distant  literary  Greeks,  also  in 
their  interior  sense,  so  early  as  the  fourth  century  B.C.,*  they 
were  rehabilitated,  if  with  much  loss  of  dignity,  by  the 
Gnostics,  B.C.  60  to  a.d.  loo.f  They  must  have  had  great 
influence  with  the  noble  Mithra  cult,  and  they  told  in- 
directly but  most  positively  upon  posterity  through  the 
known  channels,  animating  our  own  faiths  even  till  to-day. 
But  in  the  original  Hymns  the  names  which  distinguish 
them, — these  Amesha-Spentas, — are  used  in  many  differ- 
ing applications  (rhetorical  and  literal)  as  words ;  and  here 
opens  the  entrance  to  our  labyrinth. 

The  leadino-  term,  Asha  —  to  wit  —  the   most  closely 
associated  with  the  name  Mazda{h),  occurs  first  of  all  in 
its  natural  sense  of  '  correct  trttth^  having  originally  grown 
out   of  the  observation   of   the    undeviating    regularity  of 
natural  phenomena,  chiefly  in  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies;  e.g.  God  speaks  ^^/z^z — i.e.  'with  His  truth';— this 
idea  then  becomes  personified,  first  rhetorically  and  then 
literally,   as    the  Archangel  of   'rhythmic  regularity,'    'O 
Asha,  shall   I   see  thee,'  etc.  ;— it  is  then,  again  naturally, 
used  of  the  land's  '  stattUe-law'  including  religious  as  well 
as  civil  regulations — which  point,  however,  might  properly 
come    under    the    first ; — it    was   then   also    not   strangely 
applied  to  Asha  as  embodied  in  the  '  Holy  Congregation ' 
[(and  in  the  later  Zoroastrianism  Asha  without  much  incon- 
gruity ruled  the  Fire,  as  the  first  sacramental  object ; — see  the 
altars)].      Vohiunafzah,  traditionally  regarded  as  the  '  first  (?) 
of  God's  creatures,'  is  really  His  *  Good  Mind' ;— then  this 
personified  rhetorically  or  actually  as  His  Archangel, — then 
as    embodied  in  the  individual    correct-citizen — the    saint ; 
[(after  that  also  as  alive  within  all  the  good-living  creatures 
'  made  by  Mazda ' )].      Khshathra  is  the  needed  Sovereignty  ; 
first  that  of  God  Himself,  without  which  the  horrors  of  chaos 
would  be  ours, — then  this  personified  rhetorically  and  literally 
as   His   Archangel \—l\i^x\  most  practically  meant  as  the 
actual  Government  of  the  particular  State,  the  Holy  Realm 
*  See  previous  Lectures.  t  Recall  also  Manes. 


io6  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

[(and  in  the  later  Zoroastrianism  in  a  most  interesting,  if 
curious,  sense  as  guarding  the  metals)].  Aramaiti  is  the 
Energetic  'Zeal  of  the  Lord'  and  of  His  Saints; — this 
pleasingly  personified  rhetorically  as  His  'daughter'; — see 
the  feminine  form,  and  then  literally  as  the  Archangel 
[(later  also  as  the  genius  of  the  Holy  Earth  our  mother; 
(see  also  this  in  Veda) )].  Hanrvatdt  is  God's  '  complete- 
ness,' a  conclusive  concept  needful  in  the  extreme  ; — then 
man's  Health,  Well-being,  and  Success  ; — then  these  as  ever 
personified  rhetorically  and  literally  as  Archangel  [(later 
chiefly  as  the  Guardian  of  the  (healthful)  Waters,  purg- 
ing all  disease)].  Ameretatdt  is  Death-absence, — God's 
eternity,  and  man's  long-life,  with  immortality, — then  this 
personified  rhetorically  and  literally  [(then  once  more,  and 
later  only,  as  Guardian  of  plants  giving  food-life  to  all)]. 

Here  is  a  bit  of  variation,  if  variation  be  anywhere. 
And  it  is  often  well-nigh  absolutely  impossible  for  us  to  tell 
in  which  one  of  these  three,  or  four,  differing  applications 
the  words  are  first  and  immediately  intended  to  be  under- 
stood. Here  is  then  'uncertainty' — and,  indeed,  with  an 
emphasis  to  the  ultimate.  Yet,  although  we  cannot  always 
be  at  all  sure  as  to  which  one  of  these  applications  is  the 
one  intended  by  the  author  to  be  expressed  in  any  par- 
ticular passage,  not  one  of  the  three  or  four  applications 
can  escape  the  possibility  of  having  been  one  of  the  first 
held  in  mind  by  the  author,  while  all  are  intimately  related 
in  their  interior  significance,*  and  each  must  have  had  its 
place  among  the  impulses  and  convictions  which  impelled 
the  expressions.  Here  is  'included  certainty'  also  of  a 
character  beyond  all  comparison.  Other  uncertainties 
occur  from  the  defective  nature  of  the  grammatical  termina- 
tions, which  are  archaic,  unrelieved  by  the  use  of  auxiliaries. 
This  defect  continued,  doubtless,  to  be  tolerated  to  some 
extent  because  these  obscurities  were  explained  to  the 
first  hearers  by  rhapsodists  circulating  perennially  from 
hamlet  to  hamlet  under  the  direct  instructions  of  the 
*  Almost  variations  of  one  and  the  same  all-inclusive  idea. 


The  '  Uncertamties'  in  the  Gat  ha.  107 

Prophet  and  his  successors,  and  at  the  periodical 
gatherings  of  the  tribes  'from  near  and  from  far,'  intoning 
also  doubtless  hundreds  of  companion  Hymns  now  lost 
to  us  for  ever.  Yet,  as  we  have  freely  acknowledged, 
to  us  who  lack  these  original  explanations  the  exact 
literary  point  of  many  passages  may  be  again  one  of  three 
or  four,  as  well  as  the  application  of  the  names,  if  there 
be  any  difference  between  them  ; — see  above,  a  closer 
decision  being  often  impossible.  I  doubt  whether  the 
author,  or  authors,  of  the  passages  themselves  could 
have  later  decided  what  they  themselves  had  in  their 
own  sentences  exactly  meant  to  say  in  many  a  place ; 
— that  is  to  say,  not  without  a  strenuous  personal  exercise 
of  the  faculty  of  memory,  recalling  approximately  what 
they  had  long  since  once  intended  to  declare. 

So  much  for  the  'riddles,'  as  they  have  been  called,* 
the  '  eniemas  '  of  the  Gathas.  But  the  '  cause '  of  it  ?— or  '  of 
them  air — of  this  extraordinary  condition  of  things  in 
these  now  so  crucially  important  documents  ? — my  baffled 
while  inexperienced  reader  will  long  since  have  asked 
this  question  :  What  could  be  the  possible  reason  for  such 
perplexing  vagaries  ?  Was  it — the  cause  of  this — the  mere 
dulness  of  an  affected  throng — a  stupid  idiosyncrasy  and 
nothing  more?  [(As  I  wrote  in  1900  (see  the  Critical 
Review  of  1900,  p.  256) :  'If  they— the  Gathas— were 
cold  and  dry,  like  metaphysics  or  mathematics,  little  else 
could  be  expected; — simplicity,  poverty,  and  (forceless) 
repetition  in  the  choice  of  terms  would  be  de  jure  the 
order  of  the  day  in  them.  But  they  are  not  cold  in  these 
senses  ; — they  burn  with  life  in  the  excited  passages,  and 
glow  with  it  in  the  calmer  ones; — notice  the  vocatives 
everywhere,  the  first  and  the  second  personals ; — see  also 
the  iterations ; — the  composer  was  fervent  rather  than 
florid  ; — and  this  was  well  for  us— but  what  was  the  exact 
reason  for  this  apparent  deficiency  ?— or,  if  you  please,  what 
was  the  excuse  for  it  ? ')] 

*  See  the  Appended  Note  for  details. 


lo8  02ir  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Did,  then,  some  bewildered  enthusiasts,  pressing  on  a 
propaganda  amid  the  scattered  villages  of  old  Iran,  adopt 
it, — this  indefiniteness, — or  fall  into  it,  hap-hazard  ? — Far 
from  it.     These  concepts  thus  astonishingly  grouped  were 
the  signal   expression — almost   the   very  battle-cry — of  an 
acutely  pointed  political-religious  revival  on  which  a  throne 
depended.*     With    an    ardent    impulse    rarely    equalled — 
never  surpassed — they  totally  threw  off  their  ancient  ways, 
— reversing  at   times   the  very   titles   of   their   own   once- 
honoured  gods,    whose   culture    had    now    become    badly 
congested    with    minor    secular    interests    struggling    with 
the    higher    elements,     excessive    image-worship     having 
acquired  influence,  while  all  was  overgrown  with  exaggerated 
dependence  upon  rites.      It — this  antiquated  system — was 
no  longer  able  to  stir  the  degenerate  populations  to  that 
one  supreme  test  of  'good  intention,'  the  sacred  tillage  of 
the  soil  on  which  existence  then  hung  as  now  ; — their  life's 
only  salvation,  in  fact,  that  tillage  was,  from  murder,  arson, 
and  the  raiding  theft,  pestilence,  and  starvation  intervening. 
In  the  mighty  struggle  of  revived  virtuous  energy  all  must 
indeed  have  begun  upon  the  smallest  of  all  small  scales  ; — 
but    its    spread — that   of   this   doctrine   of  honest    work — 
was   obviously  immense    in    mid-Asia,    and    as    wonderful 
as  it  was  great   (see  above)  ; — the  six  pure  concepts — with 
Ahura,    seven — were    identified   with    all    Persian    Faith.f 
All  literary  Greece,  as  said,  heard  of  them  in  their  most 
vitally    essential    sense    by    B.C.    350   circa,    again    almost 
incredible  ; — even  the  attention  of  the  still  '  farther '  West 
was  early  earnestly  engaged.     The  signal  outbreak,  from 
its  longing  after  purity,  certainly  then  unique  in  history, 
reminds  one  of  the  great  Church  Reform  (upon  a  lesser 
scale),   recalling  also,    somewhat,    the   English   '  Common- 
wealth,' with  the  Puritan  emigration.     For  the  first  time, 
so  far  as  we  know  in  recorded  history,  an  earnest  political 
movement  appealed  in  such  a  degree  to  the  moral  sense 

*  See  Yasna,  XXXI,  5  :  'Who  prepares  the  throne  for  the  faithless.' 
t  See  again  Plutarch,  so  often  alluded  to  above. 


The  '■Uncertainties''  in  the  Gat  ha.  109 

of  the  individual,*  pointedly,  radically,  continuously.  They 
formulated  the  supreme,  if  simple,  concepts  like  a  creed, — 
short,  indeed,  and  so  more  pointed, — defining  closely  the 
character  of  God  in  a  manner  not  yet  surpassed  and  seldom 
equalled, t — exalting  and  impressing  also  His  personality 
at  every  line,  for  they  ever  called  on  Him  for  help.  They 
even  personified  His  Attributes  for  a  like  reason  that 
the  Christian  Logos  became  incarnate  ; — bringing  God's  just 
love,  authority,  and  power  to  the  very  souls  of  His  struggling 
people — in  the  crisis  of  a  mortal  strife.  This  saved  the 
life-enthusiasm  of  the  moment — and  this  alone  ; — had  they 
let  up  here,  if  even  for  an  instant,  their  established  polity 
would  have  crumbled  to  its  atoms. 

These  names  of  the  personified  Attributes  of  themselves 
made  up  a  short  vocabulary  as  well  as  'creed,' — curt 
indeed  it  was — this  list — but  beingr  sacrosanct  as  well  as 
fresh,  they — these  terms — conveyed  volumes  at  every 
sound  ; — occurring  everywhere,  they  controlled  the  sense 
of  all  that  followed,  and  felt  the  life  of  all  that  went  before  ; 
— recall  our  own  Bible,  'God  is  Love,'  has  'Justice,' and 
'Authority,'  'Zeal,'  and  'Immortal  Weal.'  And  all  this 
shows  why  there  is  so  little  explanation  ; — that  is,  of  these 
differing  applications, — with  a  style  so  rough.  '  Glorifica- 
tion of  the  Ameshas '  they  have  been  called — these  Gathas  ; 
— they  were  rather  their  'delivery.'  Intense  and  world- 
wide literary  interest  should  centre  here,  because  in  our 
Gathas  enormously  influential  and  emphatic  groupings  of 
first  principles  were  evidently  for  theyfr.?/  time  made  % — so, 
pointedly.  Who  does  not  value  such  a  '  driving  home ' 
of  the  supreme  laws,  even  if  literary  detail  beside  it  be 
more  than  a  little  dim  }  It  is  these  striking  elements  which 
dominate  the  theme,  belittling  'uncertainties,'  real  or  due 
to  ignorance. 

*  See  '  man  for  man '  in  Yasna  XXX,  2. 

t  See  previous  Lectures.  Is  it  not  somewhat  of  a  defect  in  our  own 
later  creeds  that  we  do  not  follow  this  precedent  ? 

\  Recall  once  more  the  vast  historic  and  still  surviving  systems  which 
found  and  find  their  beginnings  here. 


iio  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancie7it  Persia 


<b 


Later,  indeed,  as  just  said,  these  six  became  associated 
with  lower,  if  still  vital,  interests — more  pagan(?)-like  ; — 
but  the  keener  people  never  lost  the  first  ideas.  This  is 
proved  most  signally  by  the  late  Commentaries  on  the 
Yasna.  Even  in  revived  Sasanian  times  far  later*  than 
the  Gathas,  these  writings  err  on  the  other  side — the  side 
of  excessive  depth,  of  paucity ;  so,  strange  to  say,  on 
the  side  of  meagreness  in  the  lower  scope.  In  the  view 
just  here — they  actually  fail  to  express  fully  that  plain 
objectivity  just  mentioned,  which  the  simple  folk  most  like  ; 
even  the  first  and  wholly  legitimate  personifications  in  the 
Gathas,  undoubted  as  they  are, — these  valid,  if  inferior, 
elements — were  in  fact  defectively  rather  than  redundantly 
expressed  ; — Asha  is  almost  always  Aharayih,  '  Righteous- 
ness,' so,  alone  with  little  depictment  of  the  'Angel,'  Gathic 
as  he  was  beyond  all  question  ;  Vohumanah  is  Vohiunan, 
'Good  Mind' ;  Khshathra  \s  Kkskathraver,  from  Khshath-a- 
vairya  of  Yasna,  LI,  i  ,'the  Realm  desirable  ' — where,  indeed, 
is  he  in  the  text  itself  so  certainly  an  Angel  ? — at  times,  but 
not  so  often  as  the  others ; — Ar{a)niaiti  is  actually  taken 
apart  and  etymologically  reproduced  as  bondag  minishmh, 
•  perfect  thinking  ' ; — no  hint  of  Angel  or  of  '  earth.'  f  The 
ideas  were  so  adored  and  pointed  that  they  then  controlled  the 
diction — as  in  fact  they  should  to  us  ; — this  as  inevitable  ; — 
'  space '  alone — that  is,  to  save  it — space  in  the  sentence 
— was  not  at  all  the  cause  of  the  succinctness,  as  if  the 
chief  ideas  crowded  all  others  out  —  though  '  space '  was 
precious  ; — the    great    '  uncertainties '  are  then,  as    said  at 

*  The  religion  of  the  Pahlavi  Commentaries  is  a  thing  apart.  It 
should  be  separately  and  carefully  studied.  To  underrate  either  this 
religion  or  that  of  the  Vedic  Commentaries,  because  either  was  not 
actually  critical  in  the  discriminations  which  as  exegesis  they  attempted  to 
carry  out,  would  be  wholly  beside  the  mark.  By  whatever  minor  or 
greater  misconceptions  of  the  original  form  of  the  religion  they  may  be 
hampered,  as  discussions  they  often  expressed  an  increased  spirituality. 
See  my  emphatic  distinctions  as  to  this,  in  my  Introduction  to  Yasna  /., 
Leipzig,  191 1. 

t  Neryosang's  Sanskrit  more  fully  supplies  these  defects,  but  in  places 
only. 


The  '  Uncertainties '  in  the  Gatha.  1 1 1 

first,*  hemmed    in    with    a  greater    wall,  unbreakable, — of 
'  certainties.' 

To  sum  up,  pressing  the    matter   home.     We   cannot, 
indeed,    be   quite    so    sure   whether    Asha    means    God's 
Truth,  in  certain  sentences,  its  Archangel,  the  code  of  law, 
moral,  civil,  ritual, — or  the   Holy  Tribes   in  which   it  was 
*  incarnate,'  [(or  indeed,  later,  in  the  very  sacramental  Fire 
upon  the  Altars — fine  symbol  of  God's  purity)]  ; — but  we 
do    know    beyond   all    question    that    God   was    there,    in 
each  one  or  the  other  of  these  thoughts — all  inextricably 
connected  as  they  were  and  are — interior  identities  rivet- 
ing their  substrata,  each  one  needful  to  each,  and  some- 
where very  near.     Asha  as  the  Eternal  Truth  of  '  Balance  ' 
was  the  sublimest,  comprehending  all ; — but    where    could 
there    be    any     '  balance '    without    things    balanceable  ? — 
living   fibre    must   be   also    there    to    thrill    at    the    moral 
concept, — tissue     of    indiscoverable     subtlety    to    harbour 
thought. — Sentient  beingr   alone    made    Asha    'flesh'  in  a 
'Church'  redeemed.     Even  the  abstract  dream  of  justice 
is   still    undreamable    without   a    dreamer.     Asha    as    the 
holy  race  was  imperatively  needed  to  harbour  and  reveal 
Asha  in  any  sense  at  all.     Was  a  Supreme  God  thinkable 
in  solitude  ? — Having  power  to  create,  He  would  create  ; — 
begfettinor    He  would   beg^et.     Not    least   of  all  is  God  in 
Fire — which  is  not  the  mere  fine  'sign,'  but  life  itself; — ■ 
the  'mode  of  motion,'  heat  perpetual  as  it  is,  the  'force' 
in  all — '  God's  Son '  in  actuality.     Well  has  the  Christian 
Church    her    seven    lamps.f     Without    it — this    heat-life- 
motion-fire — no  brain  could  stir,   nor  heart  be  moved,  nor 
universe  revolve.     We  can  never  indeed  be  quite  so  sure 
whether    Vohumanah   voices    God's    Love,   its    Archangel, 
the  living    Saint,  or   indeed,  later,  other   forms    of  genial 
life  ;    but    we    are    by    all    means    sure    that    God's    love 
is   universal,    and   that    it    exists    in    each    such    thing ; — 

*  See  above. 

t  So,  often,  this  from  Revelations,  so  close  akin  to  the  great  '  Seven ' ; 
see  previous  Lectures. 


112  Otir  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

but  where  could  it  be  real  without  some  spiritual  person 
well  called  'angelic,'  or  the  happy  human  heart  with  its 
mother-love  and  better  passions  ? ; — see  also  the  same  in 
almost  every  living  object — each  of  the  four  ideas  glides 
quick  into  the  other.  Nor  can  we,  indeed,  be  always 
quite  so  sure  whether  Khshathra  is  God's  Sovereignty, 
its  Personification,  or  the  Realm  itself  so  sacred  ; — but 
where  would  be  the  rule  without  a  subject — the  king 
without  his  throne? — God  did  not  need  to  rule  Himself. 
He  is  rule  itself  essential. 

So,  later  also,  what  was  there  so  belittling  in  thinking 
of  the  '  metals '  making  mechanics  possible — with  all  they 
rear  ? ; — see  the  ideas  again  so  closely  linked — and  the 
depth  is  deepest  often,  strange  again  to  say  it,  where  the 
touch  is  lio-ht.  Nor  can  we  always  be  so  sure  whether 
Aramaiti  points  to  Zeal,*  to  her  who  alone  makes  '  zeal ' 
reality, — or  indeed,  later,  to  the  'Holy  Earth'  ('our 
mother  '),  with  its  '  ploughshare  '  thought — an  Ara — mind — 
first  instinct  of  life  civilised, — turning  desert  to  verdure; 
verdure  to  food, — but  God  is  there  in  each.  Nor  can  we 
be  always  sure  whether  Haurvatat  immediately  means 
God's  '  All-ness,'  that  is,  as  Person  in  speech-figure  or 
reality,  or  that  in  Man's  Weal  of  soul  and  body, — or  indeed 
later,  in  Health  waters  ; — but  one  of  the  first  three  thoughts 
is  ever  there ; — and  each  is  eminent.  Nor  can  we  be 
always  quite  so  sure  where  Ameretatdt  is  His  Eternity, 
its  Ancrel  by  word-picture  or  reality,  or  man's  deathlessness 
here  and  '  there,'  or  later  even  the  bread-plants  turning 
all  to  life.  Surely  if  God  be  any  where.  He  is  here  again 
in  thino-s  like  these.     Where  is  the  fatal  fault  ? 

I  even  dare  to  say  what,  indeed,  may  seem  to  some 
quite  singular : — Not  only  does  the  Gathic  thought-life 
survive  these  doubts,  but,  in  one  high  light  of  it,  they 
actually  help  on  our  grip.  For  they,  these  hesitations,  call 
into  play  constructive  instinct  at  every  word,  as  the  mind 
sweeps  over  all  the  varying  points,  and  the  grand  certainties 
*  The  '  Zeal  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.' 


The  '  Uncertainties  '  i^i  the  Gat  ha.  113 

stand  out  plainer,  like  boughs  of  a  winter  tree  ; — suggested 
strength  looms  over  us.  Uncertainty  here  Is  many-sided- 
ness,— many-sidedness  is  amplification, — and  amplification 
here  concerns  what  most  of  us  well  recognise  to  be  the 
first  consistent  statements  of  interior  faith.  Elsewhere 
for  literary  point  obscurity  Is,  indeed,  harassing,  if  not 
fatal ; — with  Homer  and  the  Veda  we  pursue  each  scintil- 
lating glint  to  its  ultimate,  ever  ready  to  spring  upon  our 
reader  the  remotest  fraction  of  an  idea,  if  new,  in  issues,  too, 
bereft  of  deep  significance  ; — but  here  we  are  engaged  upon 
the  very  foundations  of  human  moral  religious  thought,  the 
quintessence  of  all  just  life — without  which  we  should  still 
be  worse  than  animals  ; — paramount  values  stare  at  us, 
from  every  line. 

With  what  emotion,  then,  must  even  a  beginner  here,  in 
this  deep  'search,'  become  aware  that  these,  his  formidable 
Gathic  texts,  are,  when  looked  at  discerningly,  with  rare 
exceptions,  one  long,  unbroken  stretch  of  clearest  words,  out 
of  which,  too,  a  pointed  sense  shmo^s  piavia  facie,  not  only 
one  of  utmost  value  as  a  stepping-stone,  but  one  which 
often  survives  our  closest  scrutiny.  To  make  this  evident, 
I  restore  the  Avesta  words  to  the  actual  now  current  Vedic 
Sanskrit  forms — for  Avesta  is  almost  Veda*  And  while 
Avestic  literary  search  has  been  kept  back  by  these  many 
applications  of  the  chief  terms  recurring,  Vedic  has  been 
here  clear  for  centuries — that  is  to  say,  its  syntax  has  been 
clear, — not  so  fully  the  detailed  '  interpretation.'  f 

A  Gathic  sentence  when  restored  with  science  almost 
at  once  stands  out  as  Gathic-vedic  in  Its  plainest  forms ;  X 
this  from  the  concentrated  Gathic  thought  with  its  purpose 
straight. §      Is  it  not,  then,  after  all,  once  more  and  for  this 

*  See  the  Fourth  Lecture. 

t  Far  from  it; — no  two  expositors  continuously  agree. 

%  The  rare  hapaxlegomena  and  odd  difficulties  do  not  count,  with  a 
sense,  too,  pointed  everywhere, /n'w a /ar/i?. 

§  For  this  reason,  when  invited  to  contribute  to  Roth's  Fesfgruss,  I  gave 
a  translation  of  Yasna  XXVIII.  into  Sanskrit,  for  which  I  also  received 
the  thanks  of  the  great  Vedic-avestic  Guru.     See  also  the  Transactions  of 


114  O^^^'  Own  Religio7i  in  Ancic7tt  Pei'sia. 

further  reason  somewhat  of  a  distinguished  thing,  as  said, 
that  we  cannot  be  always  exactly  quite  so  sure  which  great 
intensity  is  first  in  mind  ; — the  uncertainties  here  too,  catch 
on  our  thought,  as  said  above,  keeping  it  ever  more  in  touch 
with  the  splendour  of  the  whole — this  too  keeps  off  satiety, 
as  we  read  them  and  re-read.  And  the  pure  thoughts  shine 
sometimes  strongest  in  solar  beam — let  us  once  more  take 
note — where  all  else  is  dim  [NB.); — one  might  strike  the 
obscurities  away — to  return  to  our  first  proposition  (see 
above,  page  103), — resulting  voids  gape  harmless.* 

I  think  that  I  have  now  considered  every  probable 
point  made  re  uncertainties — and  was  there  not  a  cause  ! 
If  the  Gathas  contain  the  earliest  pointed  effort  of  their 
kind  to  reform  the  human  heart,  being  also  alive  to-day  in 
all  our  faiths,  on  which,  too,  futurity  may  hang,  they  are, 
indeed,  unique  in  morals,  and  morals  are  never  old  ; — it  is 
the  world's  hard  task  to  drive  them  home — as  it  was  their 
Prophet's.  Life's  safety,  food,  clothing,  shelter,  education, 
were  all  impossible,  had  Justice  never  been  proclaimed,  with 
Power.  I  close  as  I  began — the  Gathic  fragments  occupy 
a  totally  exceptional  position  for  the  reasons  stated — as 
against  esteemed  high-colour  and  better  sentence-pointing 
— elsewhere.!  As  I  wrote  in  1900  (see  again  the  Critical 
Review,  p.  258),  so  we  may  once  more  say  :  '  While  the  Rik 
scintillates  with  a  hundred  human  passions,  rich  in  colour 
beyond  a  common  measure,  the  Gathas  burn  with  sterner 
fire,  narrowed  and  severe,  a  Puritan  fanaticism  ; — the  one  is 


the  Eleventh  Congress  of  Orientahsts  held  in  Paris  in  1897,  where  I  gave 
Yasna  XLIV.  in  Sanskrit,  re-edited  in  the  Zeitschrift  of  the  German 
Zeitschrift  for  July  1911,  followed  in  October  1912.  In  my  just-issued 
Yasfia  I.  this  lengthy  chapter  is  rendered  fully  into  Sanskrit.  Yasna 
XXIX.  has  just  appeared  in  that  form  in  the  Mtisam,  and  the  rest  of  the 
Gathas,  long  since  so  treated  in  manuscript,  will  follow  in  Z.D.M.G.,  etc., 
if  time  be  spared. 

*  The  forceful  elements  would  not  only  still  be  there — but  positively 
still  more  clear. 

t  My  great  Vedic-avesta  friend,  Professor  R.  von  Roth,  used  to  say  : 
'The  Veda  is  the  most  poetic  book,  but  the  Avesta  has  far  more  theology' 
(doubtless  referring  to  the  expression  of  the  '  moral  idea '). 


The  '  Uiicertahities '  in  the  Gatha.  1 1 5 

nature  eager  for  acquisition  just  or  selfish,  and  spread  out 
in  its  depictments  like  the  red  of  the  Auroras,  the  other 
was  a  reformed  enthusiasm,  centred  and  intense  *  (and  once 
alive  in  fervid  generations). 

*  The  meditative  parts  are  as  much  pre-occupied  with 
deep-felt  sentiment  as  the  more  vehement  ones  are  engaged 
with  earnest  utterance; — read  Yasna  XXXII.,  XXXIII., 
parts  of  XXXI.  and  XXXIV.,  and  \^q  polemik  through- 
out ; — even  in  the  wedding  fragment  ferocity  appears  ; — 
everywhere  the  thrice-holy  Law,  the  Love,  the  Rule,  the 
Busy  Will  of  Ahura  pervade  the  subject-matter,  and  show 
the  urgent  fresh  convictions  ever  ready  to  break  out ; — it 
is  this  which  makes  the  Gathas  "easier,"  if  only  in  a  pre- 
liminary sense.  Any  reader  with  a  good  guide  can  get  the 
cream  of  them  in  a  comparatively  very  short  period  of 
time, — though,  to  absorb  their  full  significance,  originally 
and  as  a  teacher,  should  consume  the  toil  of  patient  years — 
a  duty  seldom  met ;— but  for  the  greatest  of  all  interests 
obscurities  can  wait.'  \ 

*  And  let  us  never  forget  that  we  have  left  to  us  but  three-sevenths  of  the 
full  volume  of  such  righteous  song,  with  all  that  this  implies  ; — to  miss  this 
point  is  to  miss  everything; — the  survivals  not  only  prove  lost  messages, 
but  they  prove  a  once  vast  public  so  animated.     See  the  Third  Lecture. 

t  I  append  the  testimony  of  another  writer,  re-cited  from  the  same 
number  of  the  Critical  Review,  p.  255:  'The  Gathas,  or  Hymns,  of 
Zoroaster  are  by  far  the  most  precious  relic  that  we  possess  of  Oriental 
religion, — the  only  sacred  literature  which  in  dignity,  in  profoundness,  in 
purity  of  thought,  and  absolute  freedom  from  unworthy  conceptions  of  the 
Divine  could  ever  for  a  moment  be  compared  with  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.' 
[(Do  people  who  read  that  think,  then,  that  these  Gathas  can  be  shunted 
off  as  things  of  little  moment  ?  Really,  if  we  have  any  sane  sagacity  at  all, 
they  are  matters  of  supreme  historical  and  present  importance.  Human 
character  in  millions  of  struggling  persons  has  been  redeemed  by  them, 
with  their  fellow-writings  ; — and  is  this  a  trivial  matter?  Look,  again,  over 
the  other  Lectures.  All  the  possible  crimes  have  been  greatly  reduced  by 
these  things,  with  our  poor  human  sorrows  much  relieved; — and  is  that  of 
no  importance  ? — We  must  not  all  be  '  fatuous.')] 


8 


ii6  Our  Own  Relio;ion  in  Ancient  Persia 


Vb 


Appended  Note.* 

Some  Leading  '  Uncertainties' 

I  give  two  examples  here  of  those  uncertainties  which 
more  closely  touch  us,  and  would  apologise  to  my  general 
reader,  as  such  details  are  necessarily  more  technical  and 
therefore  naturally  less  pleasing.  In  Y.  28,  i,t  we  have 
a  thought  so  subtle  in  its  refinement  that  we  can  hardly 
credit  it  as  possible  for  the  time  and  place  :  '  With  hands 
uplift ' — we  have — '  I  ask  for  the  ^r^\.-boon  '  (so  supplying 
from  verse  9  ?) — 'of  the  most  bounteous  spirit  .  .  .'; — see 
also  the  far  later  Introduction  to  Y.  28,  which  has  a 
reference  to  the  same  idea  '  boon,'  reading  another  form  of 
the  word.  So  far  all  seems  moderate  enough  ; — but  when 
we  find  out  that  this  boon  is  prima  facie  '  all  actions  done 
in  the  Right,'  we  begin  to  hesitate  ; — for  this  rendering  is 
incredibly  '  interior '  for  the  time  and  place  ; — only  the  fact 
that  there  are  like  subtle  occurrences  elsewhere  in  the 
Gathas  relieves  our  scepticism.  How,  then,  can  we  es- 
cape this  '  sublimity  '  .^  for — as  the  unaccustomed  reader 
may  well  be  astonished  to  learn — one-half  of  our  business 
is  to  challenge  the  'sublimities'  at  every  step,  reducing 
them  so  far  as  may  be  possible  to  commonplace  ; — see  our 
similar  procedure  with  the  Bible.  ^  We  must  then,  as  said, 
challenge  this  'sublimity,'  though  we  meet  the  like  else- 
where on  every  side  ; — so  only  it  is  set  in  its  just  light. 
But  we  must  also  mention  its  possibility,  that  of  the  '  sub- 
limity,' everywhere,  even  when  we  ourselves  would  modify 
it,    otherwise   we   may   miss   some   of  the   finest   thoughts 

*Addressed  only  to  closer  students.  f  In  the  Critical  Review  of 

1900  I  gave  a  number  of  examples  of  the  less  important  indefiniteness. 

X  Many  a  '  sublime  '  concept  must  be  modified.  Recall  the  '  beauty  of 
holiness,' — it  means,  at  least  to  us,  indeed  all  that  it  seems  to  mean ; — but 
the  first  thought  of  the  composer  may  well  have  been  the  sacred  '  beauties 
of  the  service,'  or  'holy  raiment'  used  at  the  altar.  If  we  accept  'sub- 
limities' wholesale,  and  are  obliged  to  modify  them  later,  we  place  our- 
selves at  a  disadvantage. 


The  'Uncertainties'  in  the  Gatha.  117 

of  Avesta.     We  must  do  this  especially  when  writing  for 
scholars   of  great  authority  upon  other  subjects  but  non- 
experts here,  for  serious  specialists  are  few.     [(Here,  as  I 
need  not  say,  is  where  I  chiefly  differ  from  my  exceedingly 
few  colleagues,  who  print  only  their  own  conclusions,  leaving 
the  o-reat  Vedists  who  are  not  also  Avesta  scholars  in  a 
maze  of  confusion.     This  practice  in  treating  the   Veda, 
while  stating  only  our  own  views,  is  more  rational,  as  the 
Veda   is    closely  studied    by  a   large   public ;    but    Gathic 
Avesta  has  its  very  peculiar  claims  as  the  first  document 
of  interior  religion.     To  disaffect  intending  students  here 
through  an  inadequate  procedure  involves  serious  loss  to 
the  cause  of  the  higher  morality.)]     Mention  and  describe 
the  'sublimity,' — thus  I  repeat, — or  you  may  miss  some  of 
the  grandest  ideas  of  antiquity, — this  de  rigiLeiir\ — but  then 
assault  and  challenge  them,  these  sublimities,  in  yo2ir  notes, 
even  if  you  positively  accept  them  ;— test  your  steel  girders, 
I    insist,   or   your  houses  may  come    down  ; — let   the    be- 
ginner note  this  well.*     As  to  this  passage,  Y.  28,  i,  other 
writers  often  resort  to  what  seems  to  me  to  be  the  utter 
destruction  of  all  syntax  in  the  sentence.     Space  fails  me 
here  to   cite   their  well-meant   efforts, — I   reproduce  them 
elsewhere.!     We  cannot  here,  at  Y.   28,  i,  emasculate  the 
force  of  Asha  as  the  Law,  suggesting  mere  ritual  observ- 
ance ;  nor  say  ' pmiyavdh*asmi' — 'Meritorious  I  am'  with 
gifts  to  priest,  and  prayers  for  mere  good  luck,  well  paid 
{or,— p2tny<^'!''^i^  would   mean  more  than    'quite   fortunate' 
here  ; — these   '  deeds '  here  referred    to  apply  in   the  next 
words  to  the  cattle  culture  on  which  all  civilisation   then 
depended.      See  also  the  sentences  just  following  :   '  the  at- 
tained prizes,  rewards  of  this  bodily  life  and  the  mental ' ; — 
see  also  in  28,  4,  'I,  knowing  the  rewards  of  Ahura  Mazda,' 
and  so  on  throughout ;   see  also  the  expression  in  Y.   30 

*  Apply  this  to  all  exegesis  —  Biblical  —  classical  —  literary.  We 
challenge  in  our  detailed  discussion  all  these  beautiful  concepts,  and  the 
more  fiercely  the  more  we  value  them. 

t  See  the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Review  for  July  191 1. 


ii8  Our  Own  Religioji  in  Ancient  Persia. 

'  as  to  thouoht,  word,  and  deed  ' ;  *— this  constantly  recurring^ 
'  sublimity '  elevates  the  tone  of  the  entire  piece,  as  well  as 
that  of   the  particular  expressions  just  adjacent.      '  Ritual 
observance '  was,  indeed,  included — as  well  it  might  be,  for 
it  was  then,  as  now,  vital  to  stability — but  it  is  not  conceiv- 
able that  the  composer  should  have  so  limited  this  prayer 
here  to  '  ritual '  in  view  of  all  the  others.      My  last  device 
to  diminish  the  fine  effect  just  here  might  be  to  omit  the 
word  'my,'  which  brings  in  the  suspicious  subtlety  to  the 
expressions,  so  rendering,  *  I   pray  for  impelling  grace  to- 
ward all  actions  of  the  holy  community  done  with  Asha,' 
not  merely  '  my  own  actions,'- — '  all  actions  in  public  adminis- 
tration and  polity,   regulating    the    one    essential    national 
industry  ; — may  these  be  carried  out  with  universal  justice, 
regularity,  and  efficiency,  i.e.  according  to  the  Law,  Asha.' 
This  is  not  quite  so  subtle  as  '  the  gift,  the  righteous  actions 
of  the  individual  soul,'  'all  actions  done  in  the  Right,'  as  if 
the  actions  were  themselves  indeed  immediately  their  own 
reward  ;  see   elsewhere,   being  actually  referred  to  as  the 
immediate   benevolent  agency  of  Mazda,  the  '  Bounteous 
Spirit,'  taking  possession  of  the  soul,  and  making  all   its 
actions  positively  holy.     There  is  some  difference  here  ; — 
perhaps  not  so  much  ;  f  but  NB.,  the  Avesta  words  are 
actually  the  same  whichever  way  we  render.     A  closer  case 
to  show  our  point  is  again  in  Y.  28,  verse,  or  strophe,  5. 
At  first  sight  we  seem  to  have  : — '  O  Asha  (Angel  of  the 
Holy  Law),  when  shall   I  see  thee, — I  finding  the  Good 
Mind,  and  Obedience,  Sraosha,  the  way  to  the  Lord  .  .   .' 
— or  '  I  findinor  Obedience  and  the  throne  of  Mazda  .  .  .' ; — 
and  it  is  imperative  to>eport  at  once  such  a  view,  or  we 
may  miss   a  beautiful   idea  ; — but  we   must   by  no  means 
submit  to    such    a    fine    bit  without    an    effort ; — we  must 
lower  its  beauty,  if  possible.     Sraosha  =  '  Obedience  '  might 
be  taken  in  the  sense  of  the  '  Obedient  One,'  which  seems 

*  Language  like  this  before  and  after  a  passage  makes  an  immediate 
lowering  of  ideas  in  Y.  28,  i,  impossible, 
t  The  same  words. 


The  'Uncertainties^  in  the  Gat  ha.  119 

to  occur  elsewhere  in  the  Gathas ; — this  would  take  off  the 
edge  of  the  subtlety.  Sraosha  does  indeed  occur  as 
equalling  precisely  '  Obedience  itself,'  and  so  as  absolutely 
inevitable  in  its  finest  and  closest  sense  at  Y.  45,  2 — 'they 
who  render  me  Obedience ' ; — there  neither  the  Angel 
'Obedience,'  nor  the  '  Loyal  Saint'  is  at  all  possible, — but 
in  endeavouring  to  escape  from  the  *  incredibly  lofty '  here,  as 
in  Y.  28,  I,  we  might  diminish  the  'sublimity  '  by  the  device 
just  mentioned  with  regard  to  '  Obedience  the  way  to  the 
Lord,'  and  render  '  O  Asha,  when  shall  I  see  thee  '  (or  '  shall 
I  indeed  see  thee '),  '  I  finding  Vohu  Manah  and  the  throne 
of  (?)  Ahura' — [(yet  the  word  for  'of  is  in  a  dative  for 
genitive,  and  not  in  a  genitive)] — '  the  throne  of  Mazda  the 
most  beneficent  toward  the  Obedient,' — but  the  syntax  in 
such  a  rendering  would  be  very  difficult ; — the  dative  for 
genitive  or  vice  versa  occurs  mostly  only  later  as  in  Sanskrit, 
— and  it  looks  here  extremely  awkward — in  view  of  all. 
We  might,  however,  possibly  depress  the  effect  by  rendering 
'  I  finding  Vohuman  and  the  throne  of  Ahura  and  Sraosha 
(the  Angel  of  the  Heeding  Ear),  the  (One)  Obedient  to 
Mazda  the  most  beneficent ' ; — or  '  I  finding  Sraosha,  the 
Angel  of  the  Heeding  Ear,  leading  the  way  (?)  *  to  Mazda 
the  most  beneficent' — this  also  might  lower  the  'sublimity' 
a  little  [the  sublimity  of  'Obedience  the  way  (?)  to  the 
Lord,'  but  not  so  very  much.)]  The  point  is,  as  I  repeat, 
that,  finding  Obedience,  as  the  way  to  God,  though  common- 
place enough  to-day,  is  too  subtle  in  its  purity  for  the  time 
and  place.  The  sum  and  substance,  however,  remains,  as  we 
see,  unshaken  with  either  alternative  sense,  while  the  literal 
words  are  absolutely  the  same  with  any  interpretation. 

No  one  anywhere  doubts — so  let  me  pause  still  longer 
to  press  home — that  the  prophet  wished  to  'see  Asha' 
solely  because  he  was  'the  Angel  of  the  Holy  Law'  'as  to 
thought,  word,  and  deed  ' ;  nor  that  he  wished  to  '  find  Vohti 
Manah'  solely  because  He  was  the  'Archangel  of  God's 
Benevolence  and  Good  Will,'  'in  the  bodily  life  and  the 
*  Sraosha  '  leads  the  way '  in  the  later  Zoroastrianism. 


I20  Ou)'  Own  Religion  271  Ancient  Persia. 

mental ' ; — nor  that  he  wished  to  '  find  the  throne,'  or  '  way,' 
for  the  hoHest  of  reasons  ;  nor  to  see  '  the  One  obedient,'  or 
'  the  throng  obedient,'  to  the  '  most  bountiful  Ahura-Mazda ' 
solely  for  the  reason  that  he  (?)  was,  or  '  they  were,'  thus 
obedient — so  expressing  the  deepest  of  sympathetic  loyalty  ; 
— just  as  the  Christian  longs  to  see  the  '  multitude  whom 
no  man  can  number,'  as  mentioned  once  before.  This 
last  is  certainly,  indeed,  not  quite  so  fine  as  our  prima 
facie  ; — see  above, — but  it  does  not  fall  so  far  short  of  it. 

The  manifold  '  certainty '  of  one  or  the  other  of  these 
thoughts,  too  sadly  commonplace,  as  said,  to-day,  but  great 
andepoch-makingthen  at  that  time  andplace — again  includes 
and  circumscribes  the  '  uncertainties'  of  the  other  particular 
pointings  of  the  literary  sense  ; — but  then  as  mere  literature 
how  great  they — these  uncertainties — here  are  !  And  so 
throughout,  though  here  at  Y.  28,  5,  we  have  what  is  to  me 
the  severest  puzzle  of  the  throng,  with  words,  mark  you, 
absolutely  the  same.* 

*  The  remaining  line  of  the  strophe  gives  us  another  tangle,  preserving, 
however,  the  inevitable  depth.  See  it  elaborately  treated  in  the  Gathas, 
S.B.E.  XXXI.,  and  in  the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Review  for  July  191 1  ;  for 
the  literal  Sanskrit  of  it,  see  Roth's  Festgruss^  1893. 


SEVENTH    LECTURE. 

THE    MORAL    IDEA    IN    THE    GATHAS    AS    APPLIED    TO 
CONTEMPORANEOUS    PERSONS    AND    EVENTS. 

As  I  have  dwelt  so  copiously  and  so  incisively  upon  the 
moral  idea  as  being  pointedly  effective  in  the  Gathas  in 
its  finest  and  keenest  sense,  with  the  immense  inferences 
upon  the  history  of  interior    religion    and    its    philosophy 
which  such  a  fact  implies,  it  is  high  time  that  I   should,  on 
the  other  hand,  do  my  best  to  guard  my  readers  against  the 
exaggerated  impression  that  these  ideas  were  worked  up  in 
any^'exclusive  spirit,  as  if  being  entirely  academic  and  of  the 
cloister,  having  for  their  sole  object  the  purifying  of  indivi- 
dual character    here   and    there    hap-hazard,   if  one    could 
so    express   oneself,  and   in  sporadic    instances   with  little 
thought    of    any    immediate    practical    issues.     Such    an 
opinion  would  be  like  bared  poles  to  a  ship.     The  Gathic 
moral  idea,  like  applied  mathematics,  butts  full  upon  real 
life  at  every  turn.     And  yet  this— strange,  and  again  not  so 
strange,  to  say— is  a  view  which  is  much  needed  to  be  put 
plainfy  for  the  benefit  of  some  semi-experts.     Writers  of 
this  description  have  actually  supposed  that  the  academic 
intensity  of  the  authors  of  the  Gathas  was  the  sole  reason 
why  they  did  not  mention  the  important  secondary  Deities 
whose  names  appear  only  in  the  later  Avesta,  and  that  this 
was  also  the  reason  why  other  particulars  were  shut    out 
from  the  scope  of  their  attention.     Such  an  opinion,  as  one 
need  hardly  remark,   is  the  result  of  untaught  and  jejune 
misdirection  ;— and  to  refute    it  is    chiefly    my  purpose  in 
re-editing  this  fragment. 


121 


122  Oiir  Ow)i  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

To  suppose  that  Zarathushtra  had  either  the  leisure  or 
the  incHnation,  in  the  midst  of  the  civil  (or  border)  warfare 
in  which  he  was  so  unhappily  involved,  tovapour  about 
'holiness'  by  itself  alone  considered,  and  solely  in  the 
abstract  in  an  exclusive  sense  pure  and  simple,  without  any 
necessary  connection  at  all  with  his  immediate  circum- 
stances, would  be  to  hold  a  very  uncritical  opinion  indeed. 
We  could  not  reasonably  expect  this  of  him  during  the 
harassments  of  his  campaigns,  military  or  political,  or 
military,  religious,  and  political  together, — nor  wish  him  to 
dwell  upon  the  abstract  concept  of  '  holiness  '  in  general  and 
for  all  ages  and  for  all  people,  and  apart  from  the  matters 
immediately  before  him.  The  circumstances  called  most 
imperatively  for  the  application  of  the  Holy  Law,  the 
'  Righteous  Order,'  to  save  the  existing  fabric  of  the 
national  life.  And  if  we  would  not  press  on  that  point  to 
demand  of  him  an  abstractness  of  Justice  bereft  of  all 
application  to  an  actual  situation,  how  much  less  could  we 
expect  of  him  to  dwell  on  a  totally  abstract  '  Love  '  (for,  if  it 
were  to  a  so  very  refined  degree  'an  abstract,'  it  might 
even  exist  in  the  hearts  of  the  'accursed  foes  '  themselves) ; 
nor  had  he  time  to  trouble  with  any  '  Sovereign  Power '  so 
comprehensive  as  to  belong  also  to  the  other  side,*  nor 
with  'abstract'  zeal,  the  Alert,  but  in  their  evil  sense,  the 
Ready  Mind,  and  as  little  did  he  concern  himself  with 
Immortal  Happiness  in  the  same  vague  general  sense  for 
every  existing  being  (including  the  clamouring  throngs  in 
arms  before  his  face).  When  his  campaigns  were  over, 
then,  or  in  the  brief  intervals  between  them  in  his  calmest 
years  of  rest, — yes, — then  indeed  these  thoughts  might 
be  or  they  might  become  totally  'abstract'  and  nobly  so,  as 
indeed  we  see  them  at  times  during  the  very  conflicts  in  the 
Gathas ; — and  he  may  even  have  longed  for  their  realisa- 
tion without  limit  and  in  every  living  thing,  perhaps  even 
in  the  non- Iranians  so  long  as  they  did  not  take  the  field, 
but  in  the  midst  of    '  business'^    and    of   such    business  as 

*  With  its  fell  deity. 


The  Moral  Idea  in  the  Gat  has.  123 

he  had  before  him,  he  needed  all  his  wits  for  the  move- 
ments on  which  the  nation's  all  depended.     Asha  was  the 
Holy  Order,   in   God's  law  fast  enough  ;— it  was  eternal, 
sublime,   infinite,  etc.  etc.,  as  much  as  one  could  wish  it, 
and   as    strongly    as    one    could    express    it,    but    it    was 
appropriated,   seized  by  privilege,  embodied   in    an    estab- 
lished system.      He  was  engaged  in  a  struggle  in  which 
absolutely    supreme     interests    hung    often    in    suspense, 
amidst  scenes  at  times  terrific. — He  wished  to  know,  and 
very  quickly  too,  whether  every  thing  were  taut ;  whether 
every  priest,  judge,  soldier,  or  ploughman  was  awake  and 
alive.      Had  he  caught  an   Atharvan    fumbling    (with    his 
rites),  a  judge  hesitating,  a  soldier  'dubious,'  or  a  farmer 
lazy,    we    might   almost   hear   (in    imagination)    his    short 
sentence, — and  it  would  be  one  to  startle  us.     Asha  was 
God's  Holiness,   Eternal   Right,    Law,  and  Order,   in   full 
honour  and  truth,  but  as  he  for  the  moment  saw  Asha,  '  he ' 
(or  it)  was  Asha  in  the  ranks  before  his  eyes,  in  the  priests 
beside  his  altars,  and  in  the  tillers  in  his  fields.     Work  was 
everywhere  to  be  done,  skilled,  rapid,  and  thorough  ;  and 
Asha  (God's  Order)  was  the  only  force  which  could  get  his 
men  to  do  it.     He  (Asha)  was  therefore  seen  chiefly,  if  not 
only  in  the  loyal  corps  of  his  armies,  in  the  digested  laws 
of  his  codes,  in  the  '  peculiar '  people  of  his  tribes ;  wher- 
ever else  Asha  might  be,  or  might  not  be,  was  a  dream  for 
calmer  days.     [(Zarathushtra  had  then  no  time  whatever  for 
a  Holiness  which  might  smoulder  in  the  infidel ;  his  great, 
but  at  the  same  time  his  only,  '  call '  was  with  Asha  in  the 
Church.)]     The  '  abstractness  '  of  Asha  was  thus  in  so  far 
limited  at  moments  or  absorbed  for  long  intervals  in  the 
machinery  which  Zarathushtra  had  set  up,  and  in  the  work 
which  it,  or  he,  was  intended  and  destined    to  complete. 
[(I     take    nothing   back,  let    it    be    noted    well— not    one 
syllable  that    I    have   ever  said  or  written.     Asha  was  a 
holiness  deep  and  living  indeed,  none  more  so,  far-reaching 
beyond  comparison  in  its  judicial  and  benevolent  purposes, 
for    it   even   aimed    at    the    conversion    of   contemporane- 


124  ^^^^'  Own  Relioion  in  Ancient  Peisia. 

ous  opponents,*  nor  could  there  have  been  a  holiness 
more  fervent  in  the  enthusiasm  with  which  it  aimed 
to  inspire  every  universal  virtue,  or  in  the  tenacity  with 
which  it  endeavoured  to  maintain  every  form  of  noble 
action,  and  to  carry  such  principles  out  to  their  most 
pointed  effect  in  action ;  but  it  was  sometimes,  though 
perhaps  necessarily,  fixed  in  a  holy  race.Y\ 

As  to  how  far  —  in  fact,  Asha  ruled  beyond  the 
nation's  border,  amongst  the  best  of  living  Gentiles 
who  were  utterly  foreign  to  him,  and  had  been  in  no 
possible  sense  at  all  in  arms  against  him  or  his  enterprise, 
Zarathushtra  had  not  more  and  perhaps  even  less  to  say 
than  the  supreme  Christian  Pontiff  has  to  say  to-day  about 
the  potential  '  holiness '  of  the  millions  who  never  heard 
his  claims.  That  principle  and  the  enthusiasm  of  Asha 
was  not  in  any  sense  confined  to  a  '  mechanical '  sanctity, 
we  may  be  sure,  though  it  pervaded  an  orderly  working- 
structure  ; — no  verbal  mumm.eries  alone  could  for  a  moment 
have  satisfied  its  ideal  of  devotion ;  nor  could  even  a 
practical  honesty  in  word  and  barter  have  been  all  it  sought 
for, — the  heart  and  the  soul,  according  to  its  principle,  must 
be  as  absolutely  pious  as  the  ritual  must  be  pure  and  the 
civil  statutes  flawless.  As  the  two  spirits  themselves  were 
eood  or  evil  '  in  thought  and  in  word  and  in  deed,'  so  the 
worshipper  '  must  content  Ahura  with  actions  essentially 
true.'  Zarathushtra's  holiness  must  be  practical,  and  it 
must  be  spiritual  likewise  for  the  '  bodily  life  and  the 
mental.'  Here  I  am  absolutely  positive,  after  years  of 
searching  thought, — he  could  indeed  only  think  of  it  at 
moments  when  he  could  see  it  in  the  castes  of  his  warrior 
State,  and  he  had  no  time  for  Asha  either  in  the  distance  or 
in  the  'atmosphere,'  yet  even  in  the  most  privileged  of  his 
interested  oligarchy,  the  holiness  which  he  recognised  must 
not  be  of  a  technically  limited  character,  for  it  must  be, 
before  all  thinos,  sincere.  And  so  of  the  other  enthroned 
characteristics  ;  they  were  the  Good  Mind,  the  Kingdom, 

*  Cf.  Yasna,  XXXI,  i. 


The  Moral  Idea  in  the  Gathas.  125 

the  Ready  Zeal  of  Ahura  in  His  inmiediate people  as  such, 
but  they  were  none  the  less  in  reality  and  in  actuality  as 
well  a  'Good  Mind,'  a  'Power,'  and  a  'Zeal,'  sovereign 
and  energetic  in  the  individual  believer's  own  soul,  with  at 
times  a  lofty  thought  for  all  men  everywhere. 

The  entire  scheme  of  his  system  was  closely  har- 
monised with  his  active  administration,  political  and  civil. 
Such  was  the  moral  idea  in  the  Gathas,  as  I  discover  it. 
It  was  often  closely  localised,  for  the  most  part  losing  sight 
of  the  non-Zoroastrian,  hampered  at  every  step  of  its 
progress,  as  well  as  marred  in  every  impulse  of  its 
sentiment  by  a  furious  fanaticism  (for  the  life  of  Zoroas- 
trianism  was  at  stake),  yet  also  everywhere  preserving 
fine  elements  of  conscientiousness.  No  soldier,  priest,  nor 
tiller  amongst  the  foreign  hordes  could  have  '  any  share ' 
even  for  a  moment  in  the  inspired  Attributes  and  in  the 
protection  which  they  offered,  but  neither  was  a  Gathic 
man  ashavan  from  his  mere  membership  per  se ;  the 
'  official  holiness '  which  he  bore  was  no  more  indelible 
than  the  sanctity  which  cleaves  to  the  modern  Catholic 
disciple.  It  was  a  stamp,  a  xapaKTr)p  which  meant  every- 
thing in  the  way  of  privilege  and  covenant,  but  it  was  a 
mark  which  might  wear  off  through  abrasions  if  not  guarded 
with  close  vigilance,  or  it  might  become  a  brand  of  infamy 
if  defiled  by  treason,  rather  than  remain  a  scar  or  sign  of 
honour  won  through  a  lifetime  of  virtue,  of  valour,  and  of 
thrift. 

But  the  point  of  the  above  cannot  be  put  into  its  proper 
focus  and  kept  there,  unless  we  fully  recognise  that  one 
dominating  circumstance  which  I  have  implied  through- 
out— that  the  Gathas  were  the  hymns  of  war,  and  the 
moral  distinctions  drawn  in  them  are  necessarily  those 
which  were  supposed  to  exist  between  opposed  and  rival 
communities  to  be  settled  by  force,  rather  than  those  which 
might  arise  between  estranged  and  intercriminating  indi- 
viduals in  the  same  community  to  be  settled  by  law. 
Men  are  judged  of  in  the  bulk   in   the   Gathas,  as  they 


126  Oiw  Own  RcliHon  in  Aftcient  Persia. 


<i 


so    often    are    in    the    Bible,    and    as    is    usual    at    similar 
junctures,  or  throughout  similar  long  periods  of  lime.     As 
Puritans  could  see  no  good  in  Cavaliers,  and  as  loyalists 
could  only  detest  the  principles  of  rebels,  so  Zoroastrianism 
knew  no  term  too  hard  for  the  hated  throngs  who  opposed 
at  once  their  interests  and  their  faith.     We  have,  therefore, 
strange  to  say,  no  abundant  or  even  adequate  opportunity 
to  judge  of  the  personal    aspects    under  which  the    moral 
idea  applied  itself  immediately  in  that  part  of  Iran  at  the  date 
of  the  Gathas  ; — and  this,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  they 
are  themselves  made  up  of  fervent  expressions  implying  an 
earnest  reverence  for  the  moral  sentiment  in  all  its  forms, 
and  a  devotion  to  it  under  every  conceivable  combination 
of   circumstances.     Curious  as    it  may  seem,   the  far   less 
lofty  Vendldad  and  even  the  Yashts  give  ampler  items  for 
such  applications  and  analyses,  for  there  under  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  penal  law,  as  under  that  of  the  ritual  statutes 
of  the  Vendldad,  the  Zoroastrian  is  comparatively  at  peace, 
immersed  in  the  busy  toil  of  civic  life  which  discloses  the 
individual  nature    and   occupations  of  the  average    citizen 
at   every  turn ;    and  so  of   the  less    warlike    Yashts — see 
especially  the  beautiful  fragment  in  Yasht  XXII.     Asha,  the 
inspired  spirit  of  the  law,  is  no  longer  called  on  to  arouse 
the   patriotic  ardour  of  the   Zoroastrian   to    the    point   of 
heroic  action,  fanning  its  fury  to  white  heat,  and  painting  in 
still  darker  colours  the  malignant  motives  of  the  '  enemy  ' ; 
he,  or  it,  is  needed  to  measure  all  possible  deeds — domestic, 
commercial,   social — of  the  best  known   Iranian  citizen  as 
well  as  the  deeds  of  the  most  doubtful,  and  so  to  divide 
eood  men  from  the  evil,  not  in  vast  multitudes  or  in  nations, 
but  individually,  and  as  man  is  separate  from  man.     Yet 
the  Gathic  type  of  the  moral  idea  preceded  the  legal  and 
gave  it  birth,  and  therefore,  as  of  course,  includes  it ; — and 
while  the  hymns    themselves    do  not  so  fully  express    its 
incidence  and  force,  yet  at  times  even  there  in  the  Gathas  it 
searches  the  individual,  and  closely,  Zoroastrian  though  he 
be— see  especially  Yasna  XXX.  2,  3.     With  this  remark  I 


The  Moral  Idea  in  the  Gat  has.  127 

will  close  my  plea  for  the  general  clearness  of  these  most 
ancient  fragments,  so  far  as  they  express  the  few  salient 
points  in  theoretical  and  moral  theology,  comparatively 
judged.  [(From  those  weighty  sentences  in  the  Gathas 
I  have  here  endeavoured  lightly  to  sketch  a  few  animated 
scenes  in  this  long  past  civilisation.  I  do  this  from  ideas 
which  in  the  eyes  of  some  readers  may  seem  to  be  merely 
mechanically  expressed,  and  with  a  futile  redundancy  in 
those  spare  *  lines ; — but  to  any  person  gifted  with  interior 
insight, — each  of  these  formulated  ideas  contains  volumes  ; — 
and  from  them,  if  time  and  space  allowed,  I  should  boldly 
reconstruct  a  filled-out  picture.  One  scholar  could  actually 
see  no  meaning  in  the  constant  repetition  of  '  Asha '  itself, 
and  seemed  rather  to  look  upon  this  priceless  feature  as  a 
superfluity  and  a  blemish,  whereas  in  this  pointed  recurrence 
of  Asha  everywhere,  we  see  the  most  startling  evidence  of 
a  religious  revival.)]! 

*  To  show  the  absolute  essential  necessity  of  reporting  all  the  meaning 
in  these  meagre  expressions,  we  must  remember  that  perhaps  all  but  some 
three  out  of  an  original  twenty-one  (?)  books  of  the  Avesta  have  been  lost. 

t  The  above  is  a  fragment  re-written  from  a  Lecture  delivered  at  the 
Indian  Institute  before  1898,  and  published  in  the  Critical  Review. 


EIGHTH    LECTURE. 

liMMORTALITY    IN    THE    GATHA    AS    UNBROKEN    HOLY    LIFE 

BEGUN    ON    EARTH.* 

Surely  among  the  doctrines  taught  in  connection  with 
ReHo-ion  none  save  those  of  a  moral  nature  can  equal 
'  immortality.'  And  it  was  precisely  this  great  expectation 
which  the  pre-Exilic  canon, — if  canon  the  pre-Exilic 
Scriptures  can  be  said  to  have  had — failed  distincdy  to 
express.  So  much  the  more,  then,  do  we  value  it  as  it 
appears  in  the  vast  sister-lore  which  surrounded,  cherished, 
and  saved  Judah  in  the  Exilic  times,  while  it  was 
prominent  in  the  general  faith  of  all  mid-Asia — that  is  to 
say,  in  so  far  as  mid-Asia  was  represented  by  its  central 
Empire.  If,  then,  this  main  idea  in  the  faith  of  Iran 
helped  on  the  kindred  thought  in  Exilic  Judah,  a  service 
incalculably  great  f  was  done,— that  is  to  say,  '  great '  in  the 
view  of  those  who  at  all  value  such  a  doctrine  as  that  of 
another  life  in  an  unending  future.  And  there  is,  in  fact, 
one  phase  of  such  a  thought  which  should  make  it  dear  to 
every  human  heart  even  where  unbelief  and  doubt  arrest 
us  in  reo-ard  to  the  never-endinf^  continuance.  Few  can 
have  failed  to  see  that  Heaven's  light,  where  it  is  at  all 
believed  in,  reflects  redeeming  beams  on  us  and  ours, — for 
who  that  has  ever  experienced  religious  conviction  can  have 
failed  to  feel  that  Heaven,  if  it  be  ever  attained,  must  be 

*  This  fragment  of  a  Lecture  was  delivered  before  an  exceptionally  dis- 
tinguished  audience  at  the  Indian  Institute  in  1S92— it  is  here,  however, 
much  reduced,  also  re-arranged.  It  has  been  also,  with  the  others,  frequently 
re-applied  in  Instructional  Lectures  since  its  first  delivery. 

t  See  above  throughout,  and  see  below. 

128 


Immortality  in  the  Gat  ha.  129 

begun  here, — and  it  should  be  only  to  the  vulgar  a  gaudy 
scene  of  detached  repletion  totally  unlike  all  holier  joys  of 
earth.  Does  Avesta  give  us  here  any  help  in  this  last 
particular  as  well?— If  so,  its  services  were  still  more  in- 
calculably great. 

( 1 )  And  first  of  all,  let  us  pause  for  a  moment  at  the 
word  which  most  expresses  it.  Amereta-  is  Avesta  for  Vedic 
Ajnrita-,  and  our  '  immortaV — these  are  the  same  words 
identically,  with  mere  phonetic  change.  The  '  im-  privative 
in  'immortal'  is  the  nasalised  'a'  privative  of  amereta-, 
dmrita-.  Avesta  -ere  spells  Vedic  -ri ; — our  -or-  is  variant 
to  the  two.  The  */'  of  'immortal'  is  close  akin  to  the 
'  r,'  so  cropping  out  again  ; — the  -tat,  -tvd,  and  -ty  express 
the  same.  '  Ameretatat,'  '  amritatvd,'  and  'Immortality' 
are  then  identically  one,  slowly  modified  through  ages. 
Amrita  in   Vedic   was  more  often  said  of  Gods. 

(2)  In  Gatha  the  idea  was  elevated  in  mere  culmination 
amone  the  six  after  the  five.  Where  would  the  'Justice' 
be,  with  the  'Love,'  'Authority,'  'Zeal,'  and  'Weal,'  were 
they  so  soon  to  perish  ? — The  very  '  idea '  of  Truth  is 
'  unalterable  ' ;  Ahura  was  for  '  every  now  the  same.' 

Ameretatdt,  death-absence,  included  the  fuller  consum- 
mation of  the  five  sublime  abstracts  so  marvellously  shifting 
at  every  breath  to  personalities — as  if  by  automatic  action, 
in  reciprocating  force.*  *  We  often  positively  cannot  tell 
whether  the  great  '  thought '  or  the  '  Archangel '  is  before 
us  ; — so  of  the  '  two  lives '  as  parts  of  one,  we  often  ask 
'  which  is  uppermost '  ?  As  in  life  physical  present,  past,  and 
future  in  the  racial  longevity  are  unbroken  through  myriad 
c^ons,  so  is  God's  life  one  in  us.  In  Vedic  the  'hundred 
autumns '  of  the  Rik  were  the  prize  first  prayed  for,  yet 
even  there  futurity  was  not  forgotten. 

'  Pass  on,  pass  on,  by  paths  of  old  long  trodden. 
Whereon  primeval  fathers  passed  from  hence  ; 
Varuria,  Yama,  kings  in  bliss  rejoicing, 
Thou'lt  see  alike  both  God  and  Man  at  once. 


130  On7'  OiV7i  Religmt  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Unite  thee  with  thy  forebears  then  with  Yania, 
So  with  thy  \'irtue's  prize  in  highest   Heaven, 
From  blame  all  free  again  toward  home  be  turning, 
Join  with  thy  body  now,  all-glorious  blest.' 

R.  v.,  X,  14.  7,  8. 

And  that  the  life  of  the  departed  was  not  to  be 
unconscious,  see  R.  V.,  X,  16.  2  : — 

'  And  when  he  gains  that  spirit  life  among  them. 
Will  of  the  Gods  shall  he  (most  just)  fulfil.' 

Another  deep  corroboration  from  Veda  of  our  '  two 
lives'  as  the  'one'  meets  us  also  in  Indra.  He  was 
Himself  'lonof-lived,'  so  for  'eternal' — thus  from  this  life 
here.  Ahura,  too,  so  thought  our  great  Avesta-vedist, 
maybe  'long-lived'  for  '  eternal  '  in  Yasna  28.  If  'long 
life'  be  'Eternity'  for  the  very  Gods  expressing  life  as 
one,  how  much  more  is  a  holy  human  life  but  Heaven 
forefelt  .^ 

(3)  Another  chief  Avestic  thought  closely  kindred  here 
joins  on  ; — 'prosperity  is  life.'  In  the  mighty  dual  conflict 
(Y.  30)  God's  side  is  'All-life-happiness' — 'success'  in  its 
higher  sense.  Ahura  made  '  happiness '  for  man, — so  the 
Inscription — 'Non-life'  would  be  its  opposite.  Goodness 
is  '  happy  welfare '  of  its  essence  ; — beatitude,  not  its  mere 
outside  product,  half-mechanical.  '  HaurvatdiJ  '  Sarvatat{t),' 
'  Salubrity '  (the  same  words  for  one),  here  culminates  the 
foregoing  four, — for  what  would  they  be  all  and  each 
without  '  completeness,'  i.e.  success,  and  what  would 
that  be  without  'continuance'?  'Eternity'  seals  the 
preceding  five  ; — the  '  ephemeral '  is  nothing.  The  soul 
treading  toward  Heaven  over  Chinvat  *  is  young.  Good- 
ness has  nought  to  do  with  long  or  short,  it  is  embryonic 
peace  unbroken  ;  death-absence  but  guards  it  whole  ; — it  is 
infinitude.  The  very  sense  of  Frashakart  is  '  progress '  ;  f 
— millennial    depictments   are    by  negatives — as  with   this 

*  Yasht  XXII.  t  'Making  all  things  fresh,  advancing.' 


l77iinortality  in  the  Gat  ha.  131 

our  great  Ameretatat ; — we  have  'never  rotting,'  'never 
ageing' *  etc., — a  sort  of  '  excelsior  '  is  the  keynote.  It,  the 
death  -  absence,  could  as  little  divide  Frashakart  from 
Garodman  itself  as  we  Christians  can  divide  our  Paradise 
from  Heaven. t 

(4)  Next, — to  our  texts.      In  Y.  28.  2  we  have,  in  free 
translation  : — 

*  I,   who  you  two  encircle,    Great  Giver,  the    Lord  with 

the  Good  Mind, 
Gifts  for  the  two    lives   grant  me,    this  bodily  life  and 

the  mental, 
The  prizes  through   Right  deserved  ; — thus  to  glory  He 

brings   His  blest.' 

Why  such  a  piquant  phrase  as  the  *  two  lives  or  two 
worlds  '  in  Old  Iran,  amidst  its  barren  hills? — Was  it  a  literal 
distinction  between  soul  and  brain  ?  .  To  some  extent  so, 
beyond  all  doubt ;  and  that  of  itself  was  most  refined, — 
commonplace  enough  to-day.  Where  does  the  Iliad  speak 
like  that }  Somewhere  doubtless,  but  where  ?  And  that 
the  *  lives '  were  '  here  and  hereafter '  we  hardly  need  to 
prove  ;  '  getting  gifts  '  for  the  '  two  lives  '  was  an  expression 
which  could  only  take  its  shape  from  this  world !  While 
the  '  beatific  welfare  '  is  obviously  that  beyond,  the  word 
itself  suggesting  'glory,'  rather  than  mere  'comfort'  here, 
and  one  of  the  lives  of  course  was  therefore  '  Heaven,'  in 
view  of  this  Y.  28.  2  :  '  Give  me,  O  Mazda  Ahura,  the  prizes 
of  the  two  worlds,  that  of  the  body  and  that  of  the  mind, 
by  which  through  sanctity  (he  '^.)  may  place  their  recipients 
in  shining- weal.'  Here,  while  'Heaven'  is  introduced  ^ 
beyond  a  doubt,  we  have  'the  prizes  of  the  bodily  world,'  > 
distinctly  referred  to  in  close  connection  with  it. 

*  See  Yasht  XIX.,  and  elsewhere. 

t  Pairi-d{a)eza, — see  elsewhere.  We  are  all  notoriously  a  little 
confused  as  to  the  exact  difference  between  millennium,  Paradise,  and 
Heaven. 

9 


132  Otir  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

At  Y.  30.  4,  we  may  render  freely  : — 

'  Then  those  Spirits  created,  as  first  they  two  came  together, 
Life  and   our   Death   decreeing  how  at    last    the    World 

shall  be  ordered. 
For  evil  men   (Hell)  the  worst  life,   for   the  faithful  the 
best  mind  (Heaven).' 

The  word  '  best,'  Vahisht,  in  this  verse  is  the  Bahisht  of 
the  Persians,  a  name  for  'Heaven'  so  continued  on  from 
this  and  similar  places.  So,  by  the  way,  we  have  in 
Y.  28.  8  :— 

'  That   best    I    ask.    Thou    Best   One,  one    in    mind   with 

Holiness  best  [Aska    Vakis/ita), 
Of  Thee,  Ahura,    I  ask  it,   for   Frashaoshtra  and  for  me 

beseeching, 
And   freely    to    us    may'st  Thou   grant   it    for    the  Good 

Mind's  lasting  age.' 

Yet  the  expression  for  '  all  duration '  of  '  the  Good 
Mind's  lasting  age'  (notice  how  fine  it  is),  refers  here  far 
more  impressively  to  future  temporal  ages,  or  indeed  the 
next  immediately  coming  years,  through  which  the  Good 
Mind,  Archangel  of  the  Holy  Reason,  was  to  inspire  God's 
people  and  through  them  mankind. 
In  Y.  28.  II  we  have  : — 

'  I  who  to  guard  TWne  Order  (Thy  Holy  Law)  and  the 

Good  Mind  am  set  for  ever, 
Teach    Thou    me    forth  from    Thyself  to  proclaim  from 

Thy  mouth  of  spirit 
The   laws    by    which    at  the  first  this    world  into    being 

entered.' 

He  actually  uses  'for  ever'  of  his  own  teaching.  Notice 
the  width  and  force  of  the  idea — the  '  for  ever '  was  indeed 
that  same  '  beyond  ' ;  yet  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  lose  sight 
of  its  identity  with  his  life  of  apostleship  begun  here ;  and 
see  how  it  roots  itself  to  earth — he  was  '  set '  for  ever, — and 


Immortality  in  the  Gatha.  133 

he  asks  for  God's  tongue  itself  to  help  him  proclaim  the 
truth — surely  not  alone  in  '  Heaven.' 

So  in  Y.  32.  5,  where  the  word  '  Immortality  '  is  used  : — 

'  Man   therefore  will    ye  beguile    (ye    faithless    sinners)  of 

Weal  and  the  Life   Immortal, 
Since  you    with  his    Evil  Mind  the   foul  Spirit  rules    as 

his  servants, 
By  speech  unto   deeds  thus  false  as  his  ruler  rallies  the 

faithless,' 

Here  plain  reference  is  made  to  the  bad  language  used  by 
the  Evil  Spirit  in  Hell,  but  this  need  not  be  an  exclusive 
reference  ;  the  Evil  Spirit  was  active  upon  earth,  or  in 
some  spiritual  scene  prior  to  the  earthly,  and  corresponding 
to  that  in  which  Satan  is  supposed  by  some  to  have  fallen. 
The  evil  rulers  of  the  moment  are  clearly  apostrophised  for 
this  life  as  for  the  other. 

And  see  also  where  the  composer  immediately  joins  on 
to  this  32.  5,  with  its  '  Weal  and  Immortality,'  his  32.  6, 
where  all  the  busy  scene  of  an  ecclesiastical  polity  suddenly 
flashes  before  us  : — 

'  These  in  Thy  kingdom  I  place,  for  Asha  Thy  truths  I 
establish.' 

Surely  the  '  Kingdom '  here  was  the  field  of  his  immediate 
exertions. 

■^t  ZZ^  5  we  have  a  beautifully  typical  piece  where  the 
two  ideas  are  again  blended  as  this  life  prolonged  with  that 
on  hiofh  : — 


't>' 


'  I  who  invoke  Thy  Sraosha  all-greatest,  heedful  to  help  us. 
Gaining  long    life    for    myself   in    the  Realm    where   the 

Good  Meaninof  ruleth, 
And  paths  that  are  straight  from  their  truth  where  Mazda 
Ahura  is  dwelline.' 

This    smacks    of   Heaven,    if    any    language    can.      Here 
the    '  straight   paths  '    are    '  the    very  roads '  where  Ahura 


134  ^^^^'  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

dwells — hardly  the  literal  streets  of  the  Zoroastrian  Zion  ; 
and  yet  it  is  the  saint  who  plants  them.  At  43.  5  they 
are  there  the  '  straight  roads '  to  the  Kingdom  pointed  out 
by  the  prophet,  rather  than  roads  on  High  themselves; 
while  at  53.  2  they  are  again  clearly  the  '  D(a)ena'  the  Holy 
Lore,  which  showed  the  way.  Here,  also,  we  have  the 
double  reference,  as  in  so  many  other  places.  Yet  at  the 
next  verse  we  have  '  earth '  so  realistically  before  us  that 
some  might  regard  the  contrast  as  a  bathos  as  deep  as  it 
is  sudden — distressingly  so.  He  actually  calls  on  God  re 
the  crops — 

'  An    invoker    unerring    through    Truth    from     the     Best 

Spirit  will  I  implore  it, 
From   Him    with    that   mind   will    I  ask    how    our  fields 

are  best  to  be  cultured, 
These  are  the  things  that  I  seek  from  Thy  sight  and  a 

share  in  Thy  counsel '  (32,  5). 

On  second  thoughts,  however,  we  may  say,  '  well  suited 
too,'  like  our  own  prayer  '  this  day  for  daily  bread,' — their 
prayer  for  food  supply,  like  ours,  recalls  the  one  gigantic 
interest  saving  all  'so  as  by  fire'  from  crime  as  from 
starvation, — but  far  more  compactly  so  in  those  days  when 
crop-failure  meant  instant  bloody  murder  (of  those  more 
fortunate).  Good  food-raising  was  the  first  good  act  of 
the  typical  saint,  and  jusdy  so.  I  regard  this  2}Z^  6 
as  especially  precious  ; — we  too  ask  for  rain,  and  thank  for 
harvests.  God  might  indeed  here  intervene,  if  anywhere  ; 
yet  see  2)Z^  8.  9^  soon  following,  where  Heaven  is  the  most 
in  sight,  the  ideas  pass  beyond  the  earthly  horizon,  and 
in  verse  9  they  settle  distinctly  in  Heaven. 

'  Obtain    for    me    then    the    true    rites    that    with    good 

Mind  I   may  fulfil  them, 
Your  praiser's  Yasna,   Lord,    and  your  words,    O   Asha, 

for  chanting ; 
Your    gift     is     Immortality    and    continuous    (eternal?) 

Weal  your  possession. 


Immortality  in  the  Gat  ha.  I35 

Then     let    them    bear    the    spirit    of    Thy    two     Law- 
promoting  rulers 
To   Thy    brilliant    home,    O   Mazda,    with    wisdom,  and 

Thy  Best  Mind 
-  For     perfection's    help     unto     those     whose     souls    are 
together  bounden.' 

So  everywhere  the  acts  of  faith  are  progress  ;— the  advance 
is  ever  upward—'  progress '  always  as  on  every  day  of  earth  ; 
see  above  on  Frashakart. 

The  most  incisive  Gathic  expressions  occur  at  Y.  31. 
20,  21,  which  are  also  doubly  historical,  as  they  chiefly 
represent  the  original  of  the  incomparable  Yasht  22  ;  see 
also  Y.  49.  II  : — 

•  But  he    who  deceives  the  saint,  for  him  shall  at  last  be 
destruction, 
Lono-   life    in    the   darkness  his    lot— foul    his   food   with      ^ 

revilings  loathsome  ; — 
This  be  your  world  (or   'your   life'),    faithless    men,    by 
your  deeds  your  own  souls  will  bring  it ! 

But    Mazda    Ahura   will   give    both    Weal    and   a    Life 

Immortal 
With  the  fulness  of  His  grace  from  Himself  as  the  head 

of  Dominion, 
And  the  Good    Mind's  power  He'll   send  to   His    friend 
in  deed  and  in  spirit' 

Here  heavenly  'Immortality'  is  closely  defined  in  its 
contrast  with  Hell*  Notice  'long  life'  ever  again  as 
*  eternal  life,'  linking  up  the  two  parts  of  the  '  One.' 

*  In  Yt.  22,  in  its  once  extant  complete  form,  the  souls  of  the  evil  meet 
in  detail  the  exact  contradictory  opposite  to  what  the  soul  of  the  saint 
experiences,  but  the  passage  has  disappeared.  We  have,  however,  what  must 
be  a  faithful  translation  of  it  in  the  Mainyo-i-khard,  editor  West,  page  9. 
Here,  again,  as  in  the  Avesta,  the  sole  activity  which  forms  the  contmuous 
oneness  of  the  two  lives  is  of  the  mind  itself.  The  evil  man's  own  soul 
meets  him  on  his  way  to  judgment,  as  the  soul  of  the  righteous  met  him. 


136  Ou7'  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

In  Y.  43.  3  we  have:  'Then  may  Thy  saint 
approach  toward  that  which  is  the  better  than  the  good 
(the  swnvmm  bonuvi),  he  who  will  show  us  the  straight 
paths  of  spiritual  profit  of  this  life,  the  bodily  .and  of  J 
the  mental  in  those  veritably  real  ('eternal'?)  worlds 
where  dwells  Ahura,  like  Thee,  noble  and  august,  O  Mazda 
Lord.'  So  also  as  to  Y.  28.  2  (see  above).  Y.  43,  4,  5 
goes  on  :  '  Yea,  I  will  regard  Thee  as  mighty  and  likewise 
bountiful  (others,  less  critically,  'holy'),  O  Ahura  Mazda, 
.  .  .  when  Thy  rewards  to  the  faithless  as  to  the 
righteous  .  .  .  come,  when  as  rewarding  deeds  and 
words  Thou  didst  (?  '  shalt ')  establish  evil  for  the  evil  and 
happy  blessings  for  the  good  by  Thy  just  discernment  (or 
'  virtue')  in  the  creation's  final  change  (so,  literally,  in  the 
'last  turning,  change,'  or  better  'end').  In  which  last 
changing  Thou  shalt  come  and  with  Thy  bounteous  (others, 
'holy')  spirit  and  Thy  sovereign-power,  O  Ahura  Mazda, 
by  deeds  of  which  the  settlements  are  prospered  through 
Holiness  (Asha),  for  Devotion  (our  Piety  inspired  by 
Ahura)  is  declaring  the  laws  of  Thy  wisdom  to  these  Thy 
setdements,  the  laws  of  that  wisdom  which  no  man 
deceives.'  * 

To  proceed  : — in  Y.  45.  5  the  composer  says  :  '  Yea,  I 
will  declare  that  which  the  most  bountiful  one  told  me, 
that  word  which  is  the  best  to  be  heeded  by  mortals,  and 
they  who  therein  grant  me  obedient  attention,  on  them 
come,'  or  'they  come  to,'  'Weal  and  Immorality ';— and 
that  this  immortality  could  not  be  the  finite  only  we  see 
from  verse  5,  where  the  souls  (so  literally)  of  the  righteous 
are  spoken  of  as  '  desiring  these  blessings  in  (locative)  the 
continuous  (or  more  boldly,  'in  the  eternal')  Immortality, 
which  blessincrs  are  woes  to  the  faithless ' ;  and  accordingly 
the  Home  of  Song  (or  'sublimity'),  which  is  distinctly 
Heaven,  is  next  mentioned  (in  verse  8). 

While  in  Y.  46.  10  we  see  the  souls  actually  proceed- 

*  See  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  99-101.     The  wording 
is  somewhat  changed  here ;  see  the  passage  also  necessarily  cited  elsewhere. 


Immortality  in  the  Gat  ha.  137 

ino-  over  the  Tudo-e's  Bridge  which  reached  from  the  Sacred 
Alborj  (Mount   Haraiti)  toward  Heaven—'  Whoever,  man 
or  woman    shall    give    to    me    those   gifts    of   life    which 
Thou    has   known  as    best,    O   Mazda,  and  as  a  blessing 
through    Thy     Righteous    Order    a    Throne    established 
with  Thy  Good  Mind,  with  these  I  shall  go  forth. — Yea, 
with    all    those  whom    I    shall    (by    example)   incite   (lit, 
'accompany')  forth  to  the  Judge's  Bridge  shall  I  lead  on, 
while  (v.  11)  the  Karpan  and  the  Kavi  will  join  with  their 
evil  Kings  to  slay  the    lives  of  holy  men  by  evil  actions, 
they   whom    their   own    soul    (so  literally)  and    their   own 
conscience    (so)    shall    beery    when    they   approach    there 
where  the  Judge's  Bridge  extends,  and  they  shall  fall,  and  in 
the  Lie's  abode  (that  is  'in  Hell')  for  ever  [yavoi  vlspai) 
shall  their   habitations    (or    'their   bodies')    be';    and  he 
closes  :   '  He  who  from  Holiness  shall  verily  perform  for  me, 
for  Zarathushtra,  that  which  is  most  helpful  according  to 
my  wish,  on  him    shall   they  bestow  reward  beyond    this 
world  {inizhdem  par  ahum)! 

Yes;— this  Immortality  with  all  its  cognate  elements 
pervades  Avesta,  bone  and  fibre.  Yet, — as  I  have  so  often 
said,  and  as  I  cannot  too  urgently  repeat, — it  is  not  an  \ 
Immortality  of  mere  physical  continuance  which  is  our/ 
theme.  Such  '  Immortality'  as  that  is  well-nigh  universal 
from  Egypt  down.  It  is  the  deathless  One-ness  of  the 
interior  mental  identities  of  which  Avesta  speaks,  and  which 
is  alone  now  worth  our  thought ;— it  is  here  that  Avesta 
holds  the  record  ;— the  very  tissue  of  the  sentences  is 
interwoven  with  it  in  Gathic  lore. 

And  so  we  return  to  our  first  proposal ;  see  above. 
The  converted  soul  breathes  no  contempt  for  this  immediate 
life,  lost  in  long-distance  dreams,  however  glorious  ;— this 
life  was  sacred,  every  hour  of  it,  even  with  all  its  evil 
contacts.  The  saint  of  Gatha  loved  it  well,  if  purified.  As 
base  is  to  statue,  as  fundament  to  pinnacle,  so  was  this 
holy  life  in  view  of  its  other  portion— a  thought  still  finer 
if  not  so  grandiose  as  that  of  the  great  '  Permanence '  itself. 


138  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

and  far  more  touching.  The  very  rewards  of  Heaven,  as 
we  have  seen — in  their  close  shape  were  to  be  constructed 
here  at  once  in  our  now  passing  moments,  for  those  rewards 
were  to  be  '  good  thoughts,  and  words,  and  deeds '  of  souls 
all  rational — results  immediately  from  them.  Here  once 
more  as  I  have  so  often  had  to  say — this  system  '  led  the 
world.'  Then  think  again  of  such  a  Future  with  its  reflected 
light  on  this.  Incisive  Energy,  Justice,  Love,  Authority, 
Zeal,  are  at  once  its  present  and  its  goal  on  high. 
How  pervadingly  this  solemnises  every  minutest  fraction 
of  our  time  ; — what  we  do  here,  whether  it  be  good  or 
ill,  we  shall  do  there.  We  are  builders,  not  for  eternity 
but  of  eternity.  Such  views  hold  all  the  motives  in 
the  Gatha,  though  later  often  covered  up  with  puerilities  ; 
— they  impelled  the  Gathic  saint. 


NINTH    LECTURE. 

THE    SCULPTURED    TEXTS    OF    BEHISTUN,    PERSEPOLIS,    AND 
NAKSH  I  RUSTEM,   COMPARED  WITH  THE  MSB.   OF    AVESTA.* 

On  the  old  Median  boundary  not  far  from  the  modern 
city  of  Kermanshah,  a  mountain  called  Behistun,  or  Behistan, 
rises  steep  from  the  surrounding  plain  to  the  height  of  some 
seventeen  hundred  feet.  In  an  inward  division  of  it,  and 
some  three  hundred  feet  from  its  base,  in  a  wide  cleft  stand 
perhaps  the  most  impressive  inscriptions  which  have  survived 
the  ravao-es  of  time.  The  surface  of  the  rock  was  polished 
for  their  reception,  and  where  irregularities  occur  the  defect 
has  been  replaced  by  slabs  so  defdy  joined  that  the  edges 
are  scarcely  visible.  On  a  wide  surface  and  in  the  ancient 
cuneiform  character  are  cut  with  chisel  the  splendid  records 
of  Darius  the  Great,  and  of  his  successors. 

Similar  inscriptions  of  Darius,  Xerxes,  and  Artaxerxes 
the  Third  are  to  be  found  on  the  ruins  of  Persepolis,  Naksh 
i  Rustem,  Murghab,  Khorkor,  and  Susa,  as  also  on  Mount 
Alvand,  near  Hamadan,  while  the  most  important  in- 
scription which  we  have  of  Cyrus,  and  one  of  the  most 
important  of  all,  is  written  in  Assyrian  upon  an  open  vase. 
Those  upon  the  mountain  rocks  are  written  in  a  later  dialect 
of  the  Zend-Avesta  language,  and,  aside  from  a  few 
difficulties  here  and  there,  they  are  very  clear,  and  yield  at 

*  Fragments  of  a  Lecture  delivered  at  the  Indian  Institute  in  the 

nineties,  before  an  audience  unusually  distinguished.     Also  published  in 

'  the  New    World  of  Boston,  U.S.A.,  and,  later,  in  the  Asiatic  Quarterly 

Review  of  October  1909,  and  having  been  also  frequently  later  used  as 

parts  of  Instructional  Lectures, 

139 


140  Our  Ozvn  Re/igioit  in  Ancient  Persia. 

once  to  study.  In  them  we  find  expressions  of  religious 
fervour  quite  as  marked  as  in  the  writings  of  any  other 
nation.  Every  advantage  is  traced  to  the  'grace'  or 
'  will '  of  Auramazda.  Certain  clan-g-ods  are  also  men- 
tioned,  doubtless  out  of  just  respect  to  the  religious 
susceptibilities  of  the  various  nationalities  then  included 
within  the  Empire  under  the  sceptre  of  the  authors.  That 
this  considerate  recognition  was  not  intended  to  impair  the 
supremacy  of  Ahura  Mazda  is  clear  from  the  Avesta — where 
Ahura  is  copiously  apostrophised  as  the  '  Maker  '  of  the  very 
highest  of  all  the  non-Gathic  gods  as  of  His  own  Bountiful 
Immortals.  Monotheism  in  this  sense  is  dominant, — 
[(though  it  is  here  in  the  inscription  most  expressed  in  the 
constantly  repeated  words  :  '  Who  made  this  earth  and  yon 
Heaven,  who  made  man  .  .  .  '  which  imply  it. — Where  is 
any  sub-God  thus  spoken  of?)]. 

Darius  commanded  his  sculptors  to  chisel  upon  Perse- 
polis  as  follows  (see  for  this  inscription  Spiegel,  p.  47,  and 
Weissbach  and  Bang,  p.  34,  from  whom,  however,  my 
versions  differ  somewhat) : — 

'  The  great  Auramazda,  who  is  the  greatest  *  of  the 
godsf,  has  made  Darius  King. — He  has  delivered  the 
kingdom  over  to  him  —  throuorh  the  oracious  will  of 
Auramazda  is  Darius  King.  (Thus)  saith  Darius  the 
Kinof :  this  land  of  Persia — which  Auramazda  delivered 
to  me,  which  is  prosperous^,  rich  in  horses,  well-populated  §, 
through  the  grace  oi  Auramazda  and  through  mine  II,  Darius 

*  There  can  be  but  one  "  greatest,"  and  but  One  who  created  all  the 
others ;  see  Avesta. 

t  These  gods  were  inferior,  like  our  archangels. 

X  Hardly  merely  'good'  or  'beautiful.' 

§  Very  Vedic  and  very  Avestic  expressions. 

II  This  naive  expression  sheds  much  light  on  the  shade  of  meaning  to 
be  attached  to  the  important  word  '  vashnaJ  Vashnd  cannot  mean  here 
'through  the  will  of  me,  King  Darius.'  Darius  had  no  intention  of 
implying  that  he  had  exercised  anything  like  a  Sovereign  decreeing  '  will ' 
in  this  instance.  He  means  'active  beneficient  will.'  Perhaps  'gracious 
will'  is  better  than  'grace.'  The  bare  word  'will,'  which  some  writers 
consider  to  be  a  marked  improvement,  is  not  here  adequate. 


Behistftn.  Persepolis,  Naksh  i  Ruste77i,  and  Avesta.     141 

the  King's— fears  no  other  (or  'no  foe')— may  Atcraviazda 
grant  me  aid  together  with  the  clan-gods  ;— may  Aura- 
"Inazda  protect  this  region  from  hostile  hosts— from  disastrous 
years,*  from  the  (plotting)  lie  (political  intrigue).  May  no 
(hostile)  host  approach  this  region— no  disastrous  years  (of 
drought,  famine,  or  pestilential  blight)— no  lie  (that  is  to 
say,  'no  sinister  political  agitation ');— and  this  favour  f 
I  beseech  of  Aui'amazda—yN\l\v  the  clan-gods.t  (Thus) 
saith  Darius  the  King  :  I  am  Darius,  the  great  King,  the 
King  of  kings,  the  King  of  these  numerous  provinces  §,  the 
son  of  Vishtaspall  the  Ach^emenid. 

'(Thus)  saith  Darius  the  King:  Through  the  gracious 
will  of  Auramazda  these  lands,  which  I  with  intimida- 
tion dominated  \  with  this  Persian  host,  feared  before 
me  (that  is,  they  were  politically  intimidated);  —  and 
they  paid  me  tribute  (as  showing  my  success  in  their 
submission).' 

Darius  wrote  for  Behistiin  (cp.  for  texts,  King  and 
Thompson,  pp.  70,  7i>  and  W.  and  B.,  p.  28):  'What  I 
have  done,  I  have  done  in  every  particular  through  the 
crracious   will    of   Auramazda   and    (all)    other   gods    who 

exist.t 

'  Therefore  Aiiramazda  brought  me  aid,  with  (all)  the 
other  gods  who  exist,  because  I  was  not  hostile  to  Him,  nor 
to  the  lands— because  I  was  no  false  political  intriguer  (lit., 
'no  liar')— no  despot— neither  I   nor  my  family;   I   ruled 

*  Bad  seasons  as  to  drought,  pestilence,  etc. 

t  Ydnam  in  this  sense  is  also  a  purely  Avestic  expression  as  well  as 
Inscriptional ;  the  Vedic  7^;^  has  an  entirely  different  application. 

+  He  would  neither  insult  the  various  dissenting  religions  of  his  Empire, 
nor  would  he  neglect  the  minor  subdeities  of  his  own.  Again  let  us  recall 
there  can  be  but  one  "  greatest."  ^  •         ,  > 

§  Notice  that  the  word  dahydum  and  dahyujiam  are  used  in  a  'good 
sense  here  in  the  inscription  as  in  Avesta,  whereas  in  Vedic  ddsyu  has  an 
'  evil '  sense, — border  bitterness. 

II  Hardly  the  Vishtdspa  of  the  Gathas,  as  some  think.  This  person 
was,  however,  one  of  the  Satraps  {Khshatrapdvan)  of  his  son's  Empire, 
and  indeed  in  Parthia,  eastward  and  northerly  toward  Bactria. 

\  A  very  Avestic  and  Vedic  expression. 


142  Oiij'  Ozvfi  Religion  iii  Ancient  Persia. 

according  to  the  rectitude*  (of  the  law) — I  favoured  those 
who  assisted  my  clans — (in  just  return), — and  those  who 
were  hostile  I  without  any  fail  visited  with  meet  punish- 
ment. (Thus)  saith  Darius  the  King  :  Thou  who  hereafter 
shalt  be  King — with  a  man  who  is  a  (political)  intriguer — 
(a  revolutioniser,  lit.,  *  a  liar ') — or  a  positive  rebel  (?) — make 
no  political  compact  (lit.,  '  be  no  friend  of  his ') — punish 
him  with  good  punishment  f  (if  thou  thus  thinkest  'my 
land  shall  go  unscathed ').| 

'(Thus)  saith  Darius  the  King:  thou  who  hereafter 
shalt  view  this  writing  §  which  I  have  written — and  these 
sculptured  reliefs ;  destroy  them  not — so  long  as  thou 
livest||(?)  .  .  .  preserve  them.  (Thus)  saith  Darius  the 
King  :  if  thou  viewest  this  writing  and  these  sculptures, 
and  dost  not  destroy  them, — but  preservest  them  for  me, — 
so  long  as  thy  family  shalt  last, — then  may  Auramazda  be 
thy  friend, — and  may  thy  family  be  numerous.  Live  long  ; 
and  what  thou  doest  may  Atwainazda  prosper.' IF 

And  for  his  own  future  tomb  at  Naksh  i  Rustem,  near 
Persepolis,  he  wrote  :  '  A  great  God  is  Auramazda,  who 

*  Arshtdm  ;  so  K.  and  T.  for  the  formerly  supposed  dbishtdm.  Notice 
the  r  of  arsh^  confirming  my  suggestion  as  to  an  arsha  rather  than 
asha. 

t  Ahifrashtddiy  is  no  longer  read.      Ufrashtddiy  is  the  word. 

\  From  another  place. 
■  §  The  word  dipi  may  go  back  to  a  root  =  ' to  besmear.'  Notice 
that  the  writing  of  the  original  draft  for  the  inscription  upon  the  skins,  or 
other  material,  was  rather  in  the  composer's  mind.  He  smeared,  or 
'painted'  it,  to  be  later  cut.  One  would  have  rather  thought  that  he 
would  have  used  some  word  more  in  consonance  with  '  stone-cutting.' 

II  See  dargamjivd  at  XVI.  75,  p.  38,  Sp. 

^Notice  the  'proclaimed  rewards' — unlike  those  in  Avesta — 'all 
for  this  life';  so  also  in  the  pre-Exilic  Semitic  Scriptures.  Notice  what 
appears  to  be  the  very  marked  contrast  between  the  tone  of  this  appeal 
to  temporal  rewards  and  punishments,  and  those  appeals  to  futurity 
to  which  we  are  so  much  accustomed  in  Avesta. — Was  this  accidental? — 
As  Veda  was  also  eschatological,  with  Avesta,  we  cannot  suppose  that 
Darius's  creed  was  undeveloped  Vedism.  We  seem  forced  to  the 
opinion  that  we  have  here  a  case  of  peculiar  and  particular  religious 
opinion,  either  of  an  individual^  or  of  a  party,  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
Empire. 


Bekistfin,  Persepolis,  Naksh  i  Rustem,  and  Avesta.     143 

made  this  earth  and  yon  heaven,* — who  made  man — and 
amenity  (civiHsation)  for  men, — who  made  Darius  King — 
the  alone  King  of  many, — the  alone  Commander  of  many.f 
I  am    Darius,  the    great  King,  the   King    of   kings,:    the 
Kino-  of  the  lands  of  all  tribes,  and  the  King  of  this  great 
earth  for  afar,§  the  son  of  VitStaspa,  the  Achsemenid,— a 
Persian, — son  of  a  Persian,  Aryan,  of  Aryan  race.     Through 
the    o-race    of  Aurainazda   these   are    the    lands   which    I 
captured    beyond    Persia    ...    I    conquered    them    .    .    . 
beyond  Persia. — I    brought   them    under   my  authority.— 
They  brought  me  tribute.li — What  I  said  to  them,  that  they 
did. — The  law  (which  was  promulgated  by  me)  which  was 
mine  was  maintained. — (Here  follows  a  list  of  the  provinces 
or  sub-kingdoms.)  .   .   .   (Thus)    saith  Darius  :    As  Azira- 
mazda  viewed  this  earth  ...   in  war  ...(?)  he  delivered 
it   over  to   meH — he    made   me    (its)    king — I    am    King. 
Through  the   oracious  will  of  Auramazda  I   have  settled 
this  earth  through    my   throne    (or   'through  my  govern- 
ment,' or  'under  my  throne';  others  render  'in  place,'  'to 
rights,' — but    see    the    same    word    'throne'   just    under). 


*  '  Yon  heaven  '  is  precisely  Avestic ;  ava  is  only  obscurely  Vedic. 

t  His  authority  was  actually  realised  as  a  dominant  fact ;  recall  Avestic 
aeva,  not  Vedic. 

\  '  King  of  kings '  must  have  been  originally  Aryan,  and  adopted  from 
Persia  by  the  Prophets.  If  Darius  used  it  about  520  b.c,  it  must  have 
been  in  vogue  for  some  generations  previously,  and  doubtless  predated 
the  Scriptural  usages.  In  the  Semitic  Scriptures  it  rarely  refers  to  a 
human  potentate.  The  emphatic  expressions  are  more  Avestic  than 
Vedic. 

§  This  '  for  afar '  (duariapiy)  seems  thrown  in  to  modify  the  asserted 
claims  to  '  universal '  sovereignty. 

II  Practical  evidence  of  subjection. 

^  Recall  the  expressions  attributed  to  Cyrus  in  Ezra  i. :  '  All  the 
kingdoms  of  the  earth  hath  the  Lord  the  God  of  Heaven  {Deva)  given 
me.'  The  terms  in  Ezra  seem  to  be  stereotyped  (see  them  also  repeated 
from  Chronicles),  and  they  may  have  arisen  from  the  same  source  as  the 
expressions  upon  the  Inscriptions.  Indeed,  as  I  have  suggested  else- 
where, the  frequent  resemblance  of  some  of  these  expressions  in  the 
Inscriptions  to  some  of  those  in  the  Scriptural  Edits  goes  not  a  little  way 
towards  establishing  the  genuineness  of  the  latter. 


144  Our  Own  Religion  in  A^icient  Persia. 

What  I  said  that  was  fulfilled,  as  was  my  wish.*  If  thus 
thou  thinkest :  "  How  many(?)  are  the  lands  which  Darius 
the  King  governed," — then  look  upon  this  sculpture  which 
bears  my  throne, — that  thou  mayest  know. — Then  shall  it 
be  known  to  thee  that  the  lance  of  the  Persian  hero  has 
reached  afar ;  then  shalt  thou  know  that  the  Persian  hero 
has  fought  battles  far  from  Persia.  (Thus)  saith  Darius 
the  King  :  What  I  have  done,  I  have  done  all  through 
the  gracious  will  of  Atirajuazda. — Auraniazda  gave  me  aid 
till  I  had  completed  this  work. — May  Attramadza  protect 
me,  and  my  clan,  and  this  province  against  .  .  .  hosts  {^.). 
For  this  I  pray  Auraniazda, — this  may  Aurainazda  afford 
me  : — O  man,  may  what  is  the  command  of  Auramazda  be 
to  thee  acceptable, — let  that  not  be  obsolete  (or  repulsive) 
to  thee. — Leave  not  the  right  way  :t — Sin  not.' 

Such  are  the  voices  from   the  stone, — if    I   might   be 
allowed  so  to  express  myself, — but  besides  these  we  have 
the  book,  preserved  in  its  mysterious  book-life  from  manu- 
script to  manuscript,  and    from    oral    recital   to  recital ; — 
generations  of  the  priests  who  were  its  guardians  followed 
one  upon  another  and  closely, — there  was  no  break,   nor 
was  there  need  for  dying  men  to  recite  these  compositions 
to  listening  novices ; — the  venerated  words,  for  the  most 
part  fixed  in  metre,  were  imbedded  in  the  race-life  of  the 
tribes.      Long  before    the  old    could   die, — and   while   the 
young  matured, — the  middle-aged  were  there,  the  race-life 
of  the  priests  was  one  abiding  generation, — and  in  it  the 
Avesta  lived,  lasting  as  the  rock  which  itself  yields  slowly 
to    the  weather,   immovable    as    the   glaciers  which    stand 
while  they  advance.     As  time  has  worn  the  race,  as  the 
mountain  streamlet  has  eaten  off  some  letters,  and  as,  alas ! 
the  hammer  of  the  vandal  has  in  places  also  added  to  the 
injury,  so    time    has  worn    the   book  ; — but  it  lives  on   in 

*  Notice  the  repeated  assertions  as  to  the  practical  result  of  his 
administration — that  is  to  say,  as  to  its  'success.'  They  are  by  no  means 
wasted  words.     Gdthum  =  '^\.\\ront.'' 

t  Notice  the  very  Gathic  expression,  '  the  right  path.' 


Behistun,  Persepolis^  Naksh  i  Rust  em,  and  A  vesta.     145 

noble  fragments,  the  Bible  of  a  remnant,  small  indeed  in 
numbers,  but,  in  some  respects,  perhaps  the  first  of  Asia. — 
We  know  its  contents,  and  the   Inscriptions  seem  to  cite 
them  :  '  A  great  God  is  AtiraiJiazda,  who  made  this  Earth 
and  yon  Heaven — who  made  man  and  provided  civilisation 
(or  '  the  amenities  of  life  ')  for  him  ' ; — so,  as  we  have  seen, 
reads  Behistiin, — with  constant  iteration,  like  the  rest  ; — 
and  in  Yasna  I  we  have  :  '  Inviting  I  announce,  and  I  will 
complete  my  Yasna  to  Ahura  Mazda,  the  radiant  and  the 
glorious,  the  greatest  and  the  best, — who  sends  his  joy- 
creating  grace  afar,  who  hath  made  us,  and  hath  fashioned 
us, — who   hath  nourished  and  protected  us  ; — who  is  the 
most  bounteous*  Spirit'  .   .  .   The   Inscriptions  have  the 
words  '  Vaskna  Atiramazddka '  cut  again  and  again  upon 
their  surface  ; — they   mean  '  through  the  gracious  will    of 
Auramazda'  (see  above); — and  in  Yasna  XXXI,  15  we 
read  of  victories  even  more  momentous  than  those  of  the 
great    Organiser  :    '  By  Thy  Sovereign   power  and  grace 
may'st  thou   make  life   really  progressive '   (till   perfection 
shall  have  been  gained) ; — and  again  :  '  Make  every  deed 
through    grace    progressive    still,'    etc.    through    many    a 
similar   analogy.      Notwithstanding   a    difference    in    tone 
between  the  hewn-out  sentences  and  the  paper  codex,  we 
have  in  both  the  same  gracious  God  and  the  same  fervent 
faith  in  Him. 

*  Or,  with  others,  '  the  most  holy.' 


TEiNTH    CHAPTER. 

A  GENIAL  EPISODE. 

{From  the  Parsi  of  Bombay  \_Weekly  Edition\  Zifth  December  191 1.) 

THE  DEBT  OF  PARSIS  TO  PROFESSOR  MILLS. 

PRESENTATION  AT  OXFORD. 

{From  their  own  Correspondent^ 

On  Saturday  morning  a  small  but  representative  number 
of  Parsis  journeyed  from  Paddington  to  Oxford  to  pay 
tribute  to  the  venerable  Professor  Mills  for  his  inestimable 
services  to  the  Zoroastrian  faith,  on  behalf  of  the  Parsis  of 
Great  Britain,  and  throuo^h  them  of  the  Indian  Parsis 
generally.  The  movement  originated  with  the  late  Mr. 
Nasarwanjee  Cooper,  to  whose  services  in  the  publication 
and  distribution  of  gems  of  the  sacred  writings  of  the  Parsis 
hearty  reference  was  made  in  the  course  of  the  proceedings. 
The  deputation  was  headed  by  Mr.  E.  J.  Khory,  who, 
after  a  successful  legal  career  in  the  Far  East,  now  resides 
at  Sidcup,  Kent.  He  was  accompanied  by  Mr.  Homi  D. 
Cama,  Mr.  J.  Cursetji,  Dr.  D.  R.  Wadia,  and  Mr.  B.  B. 
Eranee,  who  as  secretary  of  the  movement  arranged  all 
the  details.  The  visitors  also  included  an  English 
sympathiser. 

The    day  had    begun   dull    and   cold,  but  by  the  time 

Oxford    was  reached  the    sun  was  breaking   through    the 

clouds  and  it  had  become  a  delightful  day  of  late  autumn. 

Mr.    Khory  made   timely  reference    to    this    happy    omen 

when  he  pointed  out  to  Dr.  Mills  that  Mithra  had  burst 

through  the  clouds  as  if  to  honour  one  who  had  helped 

Europe    to   understand    the    spiritual    significance   of   the 

146 


Prese7itation  to  Professor  Mills.  147 

Zoroastrian  reverence  for  the  sun.  Dr.  Mills  received  his 
guests  with  scholarly  charm,  and  many  apologies  that  the 
state  of  his  health  would  compel  him  to  remain  seated 
when  he  replied  to  the  address. 

The  Presentation. 

Mr.  Khory  said  they  had  come  there  to  convey  to  him 
on  behalf  of  the  subscribers  their  affectionate  regard  and 
esteem,  and  to  express  their  gratitude  for  the  invaluable 
services  he  had  rendered  to  Zoroastrianism.  By  his 
translation  of  the  Gathas,  which  were  written  by  Zoroaster 
himself,  and  by  his  other  services,  he  had  made  his  name 
a  household  word  amongst  all  enlightened  families  of  the 
faith,  whether  in  Persia,  their  ancient  home,  or  in  India, 
and  at  the  same  time  had  brought  their  sacred  writings  to 
the  knowledge  of  scholars  and  others  in  all  quarters  of  the 
o-lobe.  The  movement  to  do  him  honour  was  started  by 
the  late  Mr.  Nasarwanjee  Cooper,  and  would  have  been 
carried  further  but  for  his  untimely  and  sad  death.  Owing 
to  this  event  the  appeal  for  subscriptions  had  not  been 
widely  distributed  ;  and  the  promoters  of  the  project,  in 
consultation  with  his  sister,  Dr.  Miss  Cooper,  had  decided 
that  the  testimonial  should  take  a  simple  form  and  be  con- 
fined to  a  comparatively  few.  But  it  could  at  least  be  said 
that  that  deputation  was  thoroughly  representative  of  the 
Parsis.  They  had  with  them  a  scion  of  the  great  house  of 
Cama,  one  of  whose  relatives,  Mr.  Muncherjee  Hormusjee 
Cama,  had  been  instrumental  in  securing  a  translation  of 
the  Vendidad.  There  was  Dr.  Wadia,  a  descendant  of  the 
o-reat  Wadia  family,  which  was  first  in  Bombay  after  the 
English  took  possession  of  that  island,  and  some  of  whose 
ancestors  were  ship-builders  for  the  East  India  Company. 
In  Mr.  Eranee,  their  secretary,  they  had  one  closely  allied 
to  the  ancient  fatherland.  His  grandfather  went  to  Bombay 
from  Persia  only  about  fifty  years  ago,  and  he  might  be 

called  a  Persian  Zoroastrian. 

10 


148  A   Genial  Episode. 

At  this  stage  Mr.  Eranee  took  off  the  wrappings  from 
the  massive  silver  casket  containing  the  address,  and  handed 
that  document,   beautifully    illuminated    on  vellum,   to  the 
Rev.   Professor.      Both  the  address  and    the    casket  were 
ornamented  by  drawings  of  Zoroaster  and  by  well-known 
Parsi    symbols.     The    inscription    on    the    casket    was   as 
follows:      'Presented    to    the  Rev.    Lawrence    Hey  worth 
Mills,    D.D.,    M.A.,   Professor  of  Zend    Philology  to  the 
University  of  Oxford,   by   Parsi   friends    and  admirers  re- 
siding in  Great  Britain,  as  a  mark  of  their  profound  appre- 
ciation of  the  invaluable  services  he  has  rendered  by  his 
ripe  scholarship  to  Zend-Avestic  research  and  to  the  fuller 
understanding  of  their  sacred  writings  by  the  Zoroastrians 
themselves. — Oxford,  November  191 1.' 


The  Address. 

Mr.  Eranee  read  the  address,  which  was  signed  by  each 
member  of  the  deputation.      It  was  as  follows  : — 

TO    THE 

Rev.  LAWRENCE  HEYWORTH  MILLS,  D.D., 

Hon.  M.A., 

Professor  of  Zend  Philology,  Oxford  University,  Oxford. 

Reverend  Sir, — In  common  with  our  Zoroastrian 
brethren  in  the  Indian  Empire  and  Persia,  as  well  as 
those  scattered  in  other  countries  both  of  the  East  and 
the  West,  we,  as  Parsis,  are  deeply  conscious  of  the 
profound  debt  of  the  whole  Zoroastrian  community  to 
you  for  the  long  years  of  ripe  and  fruitful  scholarship 
you  have  devoted  to  the  study,  translation,  and  exposition 
of  our  ancient  sacred  writings.  You  took  up  the  subject 
a  generation  ago,  and  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  has 
elapsed  since  you  came  to  Oxford  from  Germany  on  the 
invitation  of   the  eminent  editor  of  the  Sacred   Books   of 


Presentation  to  Professor  Mills.  149 

the  East  Series,  Professor  Max  Midler.  In  Germany  you 
had  been  completing  your  translation  of  the  XXX P' 
volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  at  the  pressing  united  request 
of  Professors  Max  Miiller  and  James  Darmesteter.  From 
that  time  forward  you  have  devoted  yourself  with  an  un- 
tiring zeal,  which  age  does  not  quench,  to  this  important 
branch  of  Oriental  study,  and  for  many  years  you  have 
been  the  greatest  living  authority  thereon. 

This  is  not  the  occasion  to  set  forth  in  detail  your  con- 
tributions to  the  subject,  such  as  your  great  Dictionary  of 
the  Gathic  language  of  the  Zend-Avesta ;  the  continuation 
and  completion  of  your  work  upon  the  Gathas  ;  your  com- 
prehensive Yasna  of  the  Avesta  ;  your  work  on  Zoroaster  ; 
Philo  the  Achaememids  and  Israel ;  your  comparisons  of 
ancient  Israelitic  literature  with  the  Avesta  ;  your  editor- 
ship and  translation  of  the  Pahlavi  Commentaries,  together 
with  your  translations  of  Avesta  into  Sanskrit.  Not  only 
have  your  labours  been  of  the  highest  value  in  opening  out 
to  European  scholarship  the  rich  mines  of  Zoroastrian 
literature,  they  have  done  much  to  stimulate  a  more  en- 
lightened understanding  of  the  teachings  of  our  ancient 
faith  by  its  followers.  Although  the  great  majority  of 
Parsis  in  India  are  familiar  with  the  English  language,  the 
need  for  bringing  your  researches  within  the  knowledge  of 
the  less-educated  members  of  the  community  has  been 
recognised  by  the  translation  of  several  of  your  works  into 
Gujerati. 

Your  interest  in  our  literature  has  been  accompanied 
by  a  kindly  and  hospitable  solicitude  for  the  welfare  of 
members  of  the  community,  particularly  young  students 
sojourning  here. 

The  debt  of  the  Parsi  race  to  you  is  beyond  estimate, 
and  it  is  by  way  of  indicating  our  recognition  thereof  that 
we  ask  leave  to  present  this  address.  It  is  accompanied 
by  the  prayer  that  you  may  long  be  spared  for  the  great 
service  you  are  still  rendering,  at  the  age  of  seventy-five, 
and  by  feelings  of  affectionate  gratitude  that  you  have  done 


150  A   Genial  Episode. 

so  much  to  make  possible  the  reaHsatlon  of  your  own  words, 
that  '  the  Zend  Avesta  should  be  revered  and  studied  by  all 
who  value  the  records  of  the  human  race,'  since  '  Zara- 
thustrianism  has  had  an  influence  of  very  positive  power 
in  determining  the  gravest  results.' 

We  are,   dear  Professor   Mills,  on    behalf  of   the    sub- 
scribers, 

H.   D.  Cama, 
E.  J.   Khory, 
D.   R.  Wadia, 
B.   B.   Eranee, 

J.    CURSETJI. 

London,  191 1. 

Professor  Mills,  in  reply,  said — 

'  Gentlemen, — I  am  deeply  touched  at  this  token  of 
affection  in  its  beautiful  casket.  Though  I  feel  that  the 
expressions  made  use  of  go  far  beyond  my  deserts,  they 
do  not  surpass  my  good  intentions,  I  have  done  my 
best  since  1883,  and  I  may  say  since  1881,  to  exhaustively 
expound  the  lore  of  your  forefathers.  I  will  greatly  treasure 
your  gift,  and  my  children  will  value  it  after  me.  Should 
a  little  more  time  be  spared  me  I  will  have  finished  the 
Dictionary  of  the  Gathic  Language,  which  will  at  least 
complete  the  first  stage  of  my  endeavours — (when  I  think 
how  much  there  is  remaining  to  be  done  I  could  wish 
that  I  was  sixty  instead  of  seventy-five).  On  greeting 
you  I  sadly  miss  our  late  endeared  friend,  Mr.  N.  M. 
Cooper,  who  did  so  much  to  encourage  the  cultivation  of 
your  holy  faith.  Never  have  I  met  a  Zoroastrian  so  prac- 
tically devoted.  I  cannot  at  this  time  forget  your  late 
revered  Dastur  Jamaspji  Jamasp  Asa,  nor  the  gift  of  his 
precious  manuscripts  of  the  Yasna  to  the  University,  which 
enabled  me  to  do  work  which  I  could  not  otherwise  have 
accomplished,  and  which  afforded  the  University  the  oppor- 
tunity to  reproduce  one  of  them  in  an  unsurpassed  manner. 


Presentation  to  Professor  Mills.  151 

I  would  also  express  my  gratitude  to  the  son  of  that  en- 
deared High  Priest,  Kai  Khoshru  Dastur  Jamasp  Asa,  for 
sending  another  valuable  manuscript  of  the  Yasna  for  my 
use,  to  be  presented  to  the  Bodleian  Library  when  I  shall 
have  finished  with  it.  The  late  Dastur  also  presented  me 
with  a  valuable  manuscript  of  the  Vendldad,  which  I  hope 
ultimately  to  have  deposited  in  the  Bodleian.  I  cannot  also 
forget  the  great  kindness  of  the  father  of  Darab  Dastur 
Peshotan  Sanjana,  who  loaned  his  most  valuable  manu- 
script of  the  Yasna  to  me,  with  permission  to  have  it 
photographed  at  the  University  Press.  So  long  as  strength 
remains  to  me  I  will  continue  my  work,  being  especially 
interested  at  the  present  time  in  translating  the  Gathas  into 
their  twin-sister  speech,  the  Vedic-Sanskrit.  Once  more 
expressing  my  gratitude.' 

After  the  formal   presentation   had  closed,  some  time 

was  spent   in  conversation   with   the  venerable   Professor, 

and  then  the  deputation  took  leave  of  him   to   return   to 
London. 


ELEVENTH    CHAPTER. 

A    CHAPTER    IN    AVESTA's    HISTORY. 

( To  the  Editor  of  the  Parsi  of  Bombay. ) 

Sir, — Thanking  you  for  your  kind  remarks  in  your  late 
issues  of  4th  December  and  of  24th  December  1911,*  it  is 
time  that  I  should  let  Parsis  know  something  of  the  other 
chief  serious  items  of  good  fortune  through  which  by  the 
Divine  Power  I  have  been  somewhat  astonishingly  led. 
They  group  themselves  about  some  rather  extraordinary 
particulars  in  the  line  of  co-operative  appreciation  from 
some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  period, — they,  these  sym- 
pathetic fellow-efforts,  being  such  as  have  rarely  crowned 
the  labours  of  any  Oriental  scholar.  And  here  I  am  not 
merely  moved  by  egoistic  susceptibilities  ; — Science  itself 
has  been  seriously  at  stake.  And  this  indeed  from  some 
reasons  which  it  would  be  well,  if  possible,  to  ignore  did 
they  not  persistently  reappear  republished  in  a  stereotyped 
edition, — and  that,  too,  in  a  work  otherwise  of  great  merit, 
—and  saddest  of  all  to  say  by  an  author  who  has  elsewhere 
done  much  service  in  the  field  of  Oriental  studies.  The 
facts  centre  about  the  following  notorious,  if  painful,  cir- 
cumstance : — the  miscalled  critique  upon  Zend  Philology 
has  lone  been  a  chamber  of  mean  horrors  which  have 
excited  the  disgust  and  ridicule  of  Germany.  This  origin- 
ated in  one  of  the  most  regrettable  episodes  in  literary 
history,  the  effective  evil  cause  at  work  being  as  usual  the 
universal  '  brute  jealousies.'  The  prize  in  sight  was  great 
indeed  : — Dominant  influence  upon  Avesta  is,  or  should  be, 

*  See  also  the  issues  of  March  t,V'  and  of  April  f\  1912. 

152 


A   Chapter  in  Avestas  History.  153 

the  very  acropolis  of  Aryan  scholarship  including  Veda  upon 
the  one  side  and  Persian  upon  the  other,  with  a  vital  bearing 
upon  our  Semitic  religions  unapproached  by  any  other  non- 
Semitic  subject ;— and  such  authority  is,  if  possible,  wrested 
from  its  possessor  by  every  low  device  conceivable. 

To  explain  a  little  further  -.—There  are  apparendy  two 
distinct  modes  of  procedure  in  all  such  exegesis  ;— one  of 
them  is  to  guess  shrewdly  after  a  hurried  glance,  trusting 
to  hit   upon    valuable    suggestions  whether  they  may   be 
fully  correct  or  not,— a  fashion  by  no  means  so  lightly  to  be 
esteemed  as  one  might  think— and  as  a  provisional  part  of 
our  progress  by  all  means  to  be  recommended ;— but  it  is 
too  apt  to  be  applied  not   '  on  the  way '  or  provisionally, 
but  as  a  final  result  to  startle  attention.     The  other  mode 
is  to  exhaustively  exploit  the  entire  subject  before  hazard- 
ing  conclusive   conjectures.     The    snap-shot    guesser   has 
naturally  more  time  than   the  toiling  reconstructor,  and  a 
talented  bold  writer  often  brings  out  many  brilliant  points 
of  permanent  value,  but  his  translations  as  a  whole  are  apt 
to  bristle  with  the  absurd.     This  last,  however,  Germany 
used  not  so  much  to  mind,  '  macht  nichts, — es  hilft:  *     The 
true  method  lies  of  course  between  the  two.     One  of  the 
dashing  sort  had  done  some  interesting  work— incisive  here 
and  th'ere  in  new  points— but  choked  with  chaotic  views 
in  its  general  results.     These  later  drew  on  him  the  sober 
critique    of   another,  as    was    only  natural.      He,  the   first 
mentioned,  answered  with  a  smothered  fury  which  opened 
the  disgraceful  strife,  or  onslaught  rather,  for  the  victims 
seldom  answered.      He  'was  compelled,'  so  he,  this  first- 
mentioned  writer,  feared,  '  to  take  an  unfavourable  view  of 
the  other's   scholarship'   (in  general),    and    attacked   with 
persistent  ferocity  his  every  view.     Spiegel's  scholarship ! 
—for  he  was    the    person    meant,— scholarship  '.—the  one 

*  On  such  more  familiar  subjects  as  the  Veda  it  was  understood  that 
positive  assertion  was  used  for  shortness  merely,  whereas  Avesta  had  been 
till  then  too  much  unbroken  ground  and  too  incisively  important  for  us  to 
put  shrewd  guessing  m  our  final  reports  bereft  of  all  sense  of  probability. 


154  (9//;'  Own   Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

immense  distinction  conceded  him  by  the  most  bitterly 
formidable  critic  that  ever  drew  a  pen.  '  He  surpasses  us 
all  in  learning,'  said  the  Titanic  Roth,  first  vedist  of  all 
Germany,  creator  of  the  other  ; — one  of  the  most  import- 
ant vindications  ever  made.*  'Learning'! — he  stood  at 
the  very  head  of  Avesta,  and  I  believe  also  of  Persian 
scholarship,  before  this  infamy.  A  few  younglings,  gloat- 
ing over  an  insult  to  a  leading  master,  with  sycophantic 
adulation  re-echoed  the  mean  slur  in  varied  words.f  Then 
Justi,  Spiegel's  co-worker,  a  little  too  assiduously  close 
perhaps,+  but  all  from  generous  feeling, — he,  for  that  sole 
reason,  was  to  be  the  next, — Justi,  who  has  done  more 
practically  for  Avesta  than  all  of  us  together, — who  first 
laid  out  in  detail  all  Avesta  orammar  followed  almost  to  the 
letter  by  later  writers  with  antiquations  emended, — Justi, 
whose  comparative  philology  is  still  a  mine  for  all  who 
read  it, — he  was, — so  the  aggressor  feared, — a  '  young  and 
ambitious '  scholar  who  had  entered  upon  his  high  task 
'  with  too  little  sttidy '  § !  (this  from  a  man  whose  chief 
work  seems  bereft  of  all  knowledge  of  the  Pahlavi  \\ ).  The 
same  or  like  futile  underlings  took  up  the  cry  raised  in 
the  case  of  Spiegel — all  '  praise  God '  now  dead,  gone,  or 

*  Spiegel's  supposed  deficiency  lay  solely  in  a  lack  of  what  we  might 
'  dialectically '  call  '  snap ' — this  largely  owing  to  his  too  genial  disposition. 

t  Those  are  all  now  long  since  dead  and  gone  to  'their  own  place,'  I 
believe. 

X  Justi,  most  properly  regarding  Spiegel's  translation  as  a  good  first 
attempt  by  an  author  thoroughly  prepared,  fixed  his  attention  effectively 
upon  the  grammar,  etymology,  and  word-structure.  His  work  has  been 
the  source  of  all  such  subsequent  attempts.  Mere  time  itself  failed  Justi 
for  much  independent  suggestion  upon  the  translation — though  his  works 
abound  with  the  keenest  new  discriminations. 

§  His  own  partner  told  me  personally  that  this  was  all  from  'jealously,' 
that  he,  the  aggressor,  had  'intended  to  write  a  Dictionary  himself.'  Here 
he  had  not  even  received  such  provocation  as  Spiegel  had  innocently 
offered. 

II  He  actually  seems  at  times  at  least  not  to  be  aware  that  Neryosang 
was  translating  from  the  Pahlavi ; — the  tone  of  his  censure  rings  that  way, 
while  he  seldom  even  alludes  to  the  Pahlavi ; — later  he  became  a  high  and 
epoch-making  authority  upon  its  structure. 


A   Chapter  in  Avestas  History.  155 

converted.      I  am  speaking  here  strictly  of  the  past,  let  it 
be  understood  ;— yet  these  all,  too  sad  to  say,  '  being  dead 
still  speak'  in  the  persistent  stereotyped  Edition,  as  said; 
—though,  Parsis  should  understand,  there  were  and  are  but 
a  merest  handful  of  these  people,  not  three  persons  on  all 
'the  continent'  being  conceded  anything  which  approaches 
leading  'authority,'  while  their  satellites  were  and  are  hardly 
half-a-dozen.     The  great  dictator,   Roth,  came  once  more 
to  the  rescue,  '  musterhaft  zivechnlissig  eingerichtetes  Hand- 
btich  ' '  a  model  of  arrangement,  a  most  well-adapted  hand- 
book,'—but  so  far  as  suffering  was  concerned,  in  vain  ;— 
the  pack  took  up  the  hideous  lying  as  before  ;— two  valued 
lives   were   embittered.     This  was    the   effect,    with   many 
outside  readers  utterly  misled.      Do  Parsis  naturally  think 
these  matters  mere  personal  items  of  litde  moment  ?— They 
affect  a  mighty  theme  ; — human  hope  beats  low  for  human 
nature.*     Science    in    general  was   involved — and   this   at 
every  step.      Personalities  are  entities  after  all,  and  those 
who  have  done  indispensable  work  are  forces  par-eminence 
in  our  keeping  ; — to  see  these  consumed  would  be  as  false 
as  to  see  their  very  codices  burnt  up.     Spiegel  and  Justi 
were  fundamental.     They  survived  in  spite  of  all,  in  the 
literary  sense.     Spiegel  was  knighted  and  held  the  chair 
at    meetings  ; — Darmesteter  used  him  copiously,   followed 
him   often,  respected  him    always;  and  he  died  honoured 
everywhere.     Justi  was  made  professor  ; — but  neither  one, 
nor  the  other  ever  personally  recovered  from  the  effects  ; — 
melancholia  seized  them,  and  the  stain  on  human  honour 
rests.     And  this  was  the  field  upon  which  I  was  about  to 
enter— in   1881-83.     Do  Parsis   think   I  lower  dignity  by 
these  remarks  ?     Perhaps  I  do.—'  Position  '  I  am  supposed 
to  have — not  a  bad  thing  it  is  in  its  way,  but  for  the  strut 
and  pomp  of  it   I   have  no  time.     Moreover,  let  it  not  be 
foro-otten,   I   am   writino-   of  the    date   before    I   had   even 
circulated  my  first  tentative    edition — and   this   is  history 

*  Surely  a  Good  God  never  permitted  this ;— it  was  the  work  of  the 
Evil  Being. 


156  Our  Ow7i  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

which  bears  upon  the  present.  *  What  have  you  to  fear  ? ' 
said  a  noble  friend,  '  with  your  new  edition  of  Avesta, 
Pahlavi,  Sanskrit;  —  It  is  what  is  new  alone  which 
advances  science  ' ; — These  things  are  epoch-making  ; — so 
he  implied.  Little  did  he  know — held  back  by  kindly  feel- 
ing; — It  is  what  is  good  and  'brilliant'  which  alone  brings 
on  the  little  pack.  Discoveries  ! — the  very  hint  of  them 
strikes  rivals  cataleptic  ; — unless  you  can  control  the  papers 
with  a  foul  clique  behind  you,  discoveries  are  fatal.  The 
more  striking  they  are,  the  worse.  *  Printed  in  scarlet  ink ' 
— they  would  hardly  say  that  of  me,  but  things  next  to  it. 
Darmesteter  himself  first  warned  me  : — '  criticism '  he 
implied,  'there  is  no  criticism.'  'Success  will  be  your 
ruin.'  'You  will  sacrifice  yourself.'  'Criticism,'  implied 
a  leading  German  in  the  very  '  hot '  of  it — '  there  is  no 
criticism  ' ; — '  between '  naming  a  great  German  Uni- 
versity 'and  '   naming  another,   there   is  2^  fnrchtbare 

eifersucht — 'fearful  jealousy'; — a  book  written  in  one  is 
murderously  condemned  by  some  writer  in  the  other,  bloss 
weil,  merely  because  the  Author  is  in  that  other.  'Criticism  ! ' 
said  another; — 'there  is  no  criticism.'  A  book  is  highly 
praised  in  B.  and  fiercely  condemned  in  L.  '  One  page  is 
often  not  so  neatly  done,'  so  he  continued  ; — the  '  critic '(!) 
seizes  upon  that  and  condemns  the  whole.  [(This  actually 
occurred  in  the  case  of  the  orreat  Petersburo'  Dictionarv,  and 
from  the  very  person  above  alluded  to.  He  found  one 
word  mistaken — so  I  heard  from  good  authority — and 
wanted  to  condemn  the  whole — but  he  seems  to  have  re- 
tracted.)] 'Criticism — there  is  no  criticism' — implied  a 
well-known  writer  for  the  Parsi.  '  It  is  all  egoism.'  This 
is  all  of  the  past — again  let  me  say — I  allude  to  no  man 
now  living — but  they  may  have  had  successors,  though  all 
told  there  are  not  five  of  them. 

[(What  Darmesteter  really  meant ;  see  above, — was 
the  filchino-  of  new  matter  under  the  instioation  of  a  rival. 
The  thieving  'tool'  seizes  a  new  'edition,'  makes  a  few 
supposed  improvements  and  then  with  turgid  pomp  reviles 


A   Chapter  in  Avestas  History.  i57 

the   source   of   his   existence.*)]      And    this  was  the   field 
which  I  was  about  to  enter,— What  could  I  not  expect  ! 

'  Provocation  ' !    I   was   about  to   give —enough    of  it ; 
—Not  only  were  my  Pahlavi.  Sanskrit,  and  Persian  new, 
fresh,   and  indispensable  ;   see  above,— I   had,  beside  this, 
dared    to    use    three    faculties,  judgment,    conscience,   and 
humanity,  each  little  suited  to   the    issues.     Above    all    I 
faced  the  Gathic  prima  facie— ^h^r^  it  still  lingered  sane, 
—this  is  yet  my  chief  crime.     [('He  has  not  accepted  our 
improvements '  f— so   they  would   surely  say  ;— yet   I   was 
often  doing  just  that  very  same.     All    the    chief   ones    I 
was    actuallv     accepting    as    alternatives ;  — so    a    great 
Sanskritist   advised   me— this    in    '8i,   though    they,  those 
views,    had    been    made    openly  without    the   alphabet    of 
Pahlavi : ;    yet    this   was    not  the  only  reason  why   I   was 
putting  them  in  my  alternative.)]— I    had   dared  to  mark 
the  abysmal  faults  of  Pahlavi,  Persian,  and  Sanskrit  upon 
the    one   side  and  their  splendid  hits  upon  the  other  ;— I 
had  dared  in  fact  the  via  media— no^  followed  close   by 
all_as   well  as  prima  facie.      I    was   even    citing    all    my 
opposition  modern  as  well  as  ancient.      In  fact  1   was  not 
only    preparing    a   first   translation    ever    made    with    ex- 
haustive   treatment    of    three    commentaries    but    also    a 
translation    with    which    I    felt    all    sane  writers  would  in 
the  main  agree,  as  near  as  one  translator  should  reasonably 
agree  with  another— this  was,  as  I  fully  felt,  the  acme  of 
audacity.      Not    even    that    sufficed   me !      I    was  working 
upon  the  fullest  and  the  closest  commentary  yet  attempted, 

*  Awful  perfidy. 

t  As  they  were  all  the  work  of  a  great  master,  filched  for  the  most 

part  from  him  and  made  without  the  Pahlavi. 

X  I  regarded,  and  still  regard,  all  translations  made  without  mastery  ot 
materials  as  being  merely  provisional  and  so  as  of  subordmate  scientific 
value  when  regarded  as  work  completed,  this,  as  of  course  ;-and  so  the 
authors  must  desire  to  be  understood,  but  they  did  not  hold  that  tone 
in  their  immediate  productions.  From  this  reason  I  was  giving  all  the 
renderings,  ancient  and  modern— with  my  own  differing  or  agreeing,  yet 
very  near  indeed  those  now  prevailing. 


r^^ 


158  Our  Own  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

with  Dictionary  promised !  [(That  I  had  used  a  close 
Latin  was  not  so  much  my  offence;  —  Haug  had  used 
Latin,  RawHnson  had  used  Latin, — Latin  is  verbatim's 
only  vehicle, — but  I  had  used  it  copiously,  and  copious 
Latin  would  alone  bring  on  the  petifogging  group.)] — In- 
fatuation still  held  me  ; — I  was  preparing  my  free  metrical. 
—  Hauo-  had  used  free  German ; — Roth  had  used  free 
metrical  upon  Vedic  ;  Grassmann  had  used  free  metrical — 
to  illustrate  the  metrical  was  essential ; — but  mine  was  a 
first  attempt — and  I  was  putting  all  together,  verbatims, 
free  metricals, — the  three  expository  texts,  Commentary, 
Dictionary  !  What  had  I  to  expect  ?  * — The  very  sight  and 
bulk  of  such  a  book  with  its  twelve  hundred  pages  would 
bring  the  frenzy  on — the  cliques  would  stagger  to  their 
pens.  '  Es  imponirt,'  said  a  great  friend.  Well  did  I  know 
what  that  meant — 'imposing'  to  sane  honour,  a  blazing  torch 
to  thieving  combinations.  The  splendid  theme  itself  some- 
what sustained  me  f  ; — tough  sinews  wrapped  me  firm.  I 
fear  I  love  a  battle, — contempt  my  only  weapon.  What 
could   I   expect?     Herder  even  wrote  against   Kant. 

What  happened? — always  'the  unexpected.'  Suddenly 
interrupted  by  Roth's  desire  to  have  the  book  as  in  so  far 
tentatively  printed,  I  could  not  refuse  ; — [he  later  wrote  for 
the  fuller  edition  as  sehr  ei^wunscht  (very  gratefully  de- 
sired. He  had  given  me  gratuitously  double  and  private 
lectures.)] — Having  put  the  tentative  book  into  the  hands 
of  this  endeared  if  somewhat  formidable  critic  (he  promised 
me  a  '  kind  word,'  and  a  '  kind  word '  from  him  would  ward 
off  sneak  butchery),  I  denied  it  to  none.J     xA.mong  others 

*  One  acquaintance  personally  touched  upon  this  point.  'Ah!  you 
have  done  too  much.'  He  wished  to  let  me  down  gently.  I  did  not 
fully  know  what  he  meant,  nor  do  I  now. 

t  Where  in  human  thought  were  there  such  sublimities?  See  my 
depictments  elsewhere. 

I  I  am  not  at  all  ashamed  to  mention  these  particulars  ;— recall  what 
my  predecessors  had  suffered  in  actual  loss  of  health  : — recollect  that  I 
was  to  face  a  combination  utterly  bereft  of  sanity  in  honour  who  had  all 
power  to  retard  me. 


A   Chapter  in  Avestas  History.  i59 

Darmesteter    received    it.      I    turned    to   my  never-ending 
toil.       In     Hanover,    where    I    was    residing,    giving    my 
children  the  very  great  advantages  of  German  education, 
in  November  1883,  I  heard  from  him,   Darmesteter  :— he 
urgently  requested  me  to  take  his  place    on    the    Sacred 
Books  of  the   East !  *     It  was  certainly  one   of  the  most 
remarkable    letters    ever    written,    and    at    that    time    was 
crucial    in    its    importance   to  me.      He,   Darmesteter,  the 
most  distinguished  literary  man  in  France  after,  with,  or 
before  Oppert,  urged  me,  a  person  who  had  only  tentatively 
printed,— in   Max  Muller's  name  and  immediately  writing 
at    his    request,— the   last,    by    all    means    also    the    most 
distino-uished    non-resident    literary    German,  —  the     two 
invitino-  me  on  behalf  of  the  University  Press  of  Oxford 
to    take    Professor    Darmesteter's    place    on    the    Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  the   most  prominent  series  which  has 
ever  appeared,  with  Georg  Biihler  at  its  head,— and  upon 
one  of  the  most  'important'  volumes  of  it,— and  this  'in 
the    hope    of  a    favourable    answer.' — I    was   to   take   the 
Yasna  on  account  of  the  Gathas,  perhaps  the  very  most 
vitally    essential    religious    subject    in    the    whole    XLIX 
volumes    and    certainly    the    most    difficult.      Max    Mliller 
was  kind  enough  to  explain  that  I   '  was  (then)  considered 
the  best  authority  on  the  true  interpretation  of  the  ancient 
'Gathas';  s&q  i\\&  Athencsum,  April  12,  1884.'!     I  was  to 
use  my  '  free  metrical  as  modified  by  my  verbatim.' — Here 
was   something  a  litde  different  from  what  my  martyred 
predecessors  had  met.     Touched  and  encouraged  I  turned 
to  that  new  work,  and  published  in  1887.     Again  I  waited 
somewhat  anxiously;   see  above.— Some  would  be  surely 
nettled,  as  I  had  felt  forced  to  apologise  for  knowing  the 
Pahlavi  alphabet  and  using  a  free  metrical  for  Yasna  IX. 

*  See  at  the  end  some  pleasing  expressions  with  reference  to  it. 

t  His,  Darmesteter's,  studies  had  been  mostly  upon  the  Vendidad, 
and  he  '  shrank '  for  the  moment,  as  he  later  printed,  from  the  '  enigma ' 
of  the  Gathas,  afterwards  writing  fully  and  in  a  most  valuable  manner  upon 
them. 


i6o  Our  Ow7i  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

I  waited.  Darmesteter  soon  wrote  that  it  was  '  already 
cited  and  appreciated  by  all  the  specialists '  ;  Max  Muller 
added  that  it  had  been  'favourably'  received; — Spiegel 
reviewed  it  respectfully  in  the  Berlin  Litcratttr  Zeitung, 
'Ansichten  wol  erwagen '  ; — it  had  been  subventioned  by 
Government  with  the  rest  of  the  S.B.E. — was  translated 
into  Gujarati  so  far  as  the  completed  Gathas — mentioned 
in  the  Encyclopccdia  Brittanica. — 'The  best  translations 
are  those  of  Darmesteter  and  Mills,'  so  Dr.  Geldner, 
Here  was  again  something  a  little  different  from  the 
'  expected  ' ; — see  at  the  end  a  most  touching  letter  from 
Mr.   Gladstone. 

But  my  more  mighty  grip  was  yet  to  come.  Men- 
dacity would  gather  for  its  spring,  and  mendacity  alone 
was  what  I  feared  *  (the  hard  lying  shown  above).  I 
finished  the  Gathas  and  published  Parts  I.  and  III,,  and 
again  I  trimmed  all  taut  for  the  encounter.  One  morning 
I  got  a  Review  by  post;  —  it  was  the  Gottingische 
GeleJirte  Anzeigen  of  May  13,  1893,  from  Justi. — 
Would  he  take  vengeance  for  his  own  great  suffering — 
excuse  the  base  thought — I  never  had  it. — I  opened  and 
I  read :  '  das  erofebniss  einer  erstaunlicher  Arbeit  sehr 
mannio-faltigfer  Art.  Unser  verstandniss  der  Gathas 
machtig  gefordet,'  and  later  in  the  Preussisches  Jahrbuch — 
'  insbesondere  von  Mills  der  diese  schwierigen  Gedichte 
in  o-rundlichster  Weise  behandelt  hat'  '  The  result  of 
an  astonishing  labour  ;  our  understanding  of  the  Gathas 
greatly  furthered' — 'Especially  of  Mills,  who  has  treated 
these  difficult  poems  in  the  most  exhaustive  manner.' 
Noble  words  of  vast  influence  against  the  forefelt  flood 
of  lying.  And  then  Darmesteter — would  he  be  piqued 
at  the  sight  of  the  pages  ? — The  Revtie  Critique  arrived 
— Septembre  1893, — 'tous  ceux  qui  s'occupent  des  Gathas 

*  Bergaigne  had  refused  authority  even  to  Roth  himself,  but  Bergaigne 
was  a  gentleman ; — he  would  not  have  denied  the  herculean  suggestive- 
ness  of  the  great  German :  '  thought-stirring  effort,'  even  when  not 
accepted,  is  highly  prized. 


A   Chapter  in  Avesta s  History.  i6i 

rendront  hommage  a  rimmense  labeur  scientifique  de 
M.  Mills  .  .  .  son  livre  reste  un  instrument  indispen- 
sable pour  I'etude,'  etc.,  etc.  I  was  invited  to  contribute 
to  Roth's  Festgruss,  and  my  exceptional  piece  in  the 
Sanskrit  language  was  accepted  (with  Roth's  later  thanks). 
In  '94  I  issued  the  completed  Gathas,  pages  622  +  xxx. 
Pischel,  first  Sanskritist  of  Germany  (after  Bothlingk) — 
once  more  declared,  Zeitsch'ift  D.M.G.,  1896:  '  alles 
was  flir  die  erklarunor  der  Gathas  nothwendio-  ist  .  . 
immer  wird  es  die  Grundlage  bllden  auf  der  sich  yede 
weitere  Forschung  aufbauen  muss  .  .  .  einen  hervora- 
genden  Dienst.' — '  Everything  which  is  necessary  to  the 
explanation  of  the  Gathas  ' ;  '  ever  will  it  remain  the  basis 
upon  which  every  future  work  will  be  built ' ;  '  an  eminent 
service.'  So  Dr.  E.  W.  West  followed  in  J.R.A.S., 
1896.  So  Professor  Wilhelm :  'This  work  affords  to 
every  Avesta  scholar  complete  materials  for  the  study 
of  the  Gathas'  —  Bombay  Iranian  Catalogue,  1901.  So 
several  eminent  scholars  in  private  correspondence.*  His 
Lordship  the  Secretary  of  State  for  India  in  Council  had 
subventioned  me  again  under  Rawlinson's  influence, — 
The  Trustees  of  the  Sir  J.  Jejeebhoy  Translation  Fund 
followed  his  Lordship's  lead.  Never  before  had  such  a 
book  of  such  dimensions  met  such  success — which  happily 
continues.  Dr.  L.  H.  Gray,  one  of  the  most  gifted  men 
living,  wrote  of  it  so  late  as  1906:  'beyond  question  our 
leading  authority  now  living  on  the  Gathas.' 

After  such  a  full  reception  the  storm  of  concentrated 
venom  must  certainly  have  had  its  vent  at  least  in  small 
ejections.  How  do  I  know  this, — for  I  have  never  read  a 
word.  So  long  ago  as  1897  at  the  Reception  in  Paris 
where  the  Congress  of  Orientalists  was  sitting,  an  eminent 
German,  whose  personal  acquaintance  I  had  not  yet  made, 
said  as  he  passed  me,  '  All  the  world  knows  of  your  great 
productions.'  From  that  I  understood  that  the  units  had 
begun  under  instigation — while  Gray  has  later  expressed 

*  'A  deepening  of  method,'  etc. 


1 62  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  A7icie7it  Persia. 

his  indignation.  [(Probably  my  incisive  discoveries  had 
touched  them  rather  closely  ;— for  I  have  advanced  further 
reconstructions  of  the  Avesta  alphabet  from  its  original 
the  Avesta-pahlavi,  no  one  anywhere  having  as  yet 
suspected  the  almost  necessary  survival  of  original  Pah- 
lavi  sio-ns  in  the  full  Avesta  forms.*)]  And  it  is  sitcli 
thinos  to  which  some  parties  wish  to  call  my  attention. 
Suppose  I  should  catch  one  of  these  gentlemen  before  a 
court  academical. — '  So  you   have  looked  askance  at  my 

work have    you — a    book    which    has    been    pronounced 

epoch-making  by  the  first  men  of  the  day  ; — have  you  ever 
read  it?' — '1  have  glanced  over  your  free  metrical  and 
your  free  Y.  IX.  in  S.B.E!—'  Have  you  ever  read  my 
verbatims  in  their  Latin  form  (which  has  been  liked).?' 
see  above. — '  I  have  glanced  over  them.' — '  Do  you  think 
hasty  'glancing'  is  enough  in  the  case  of  a  work  so 
valued?';  see  above. — No  answer.  'Did  you  ever  even 
open  the  covers  of  my  English  verbatims  and  free  metricals 

of  1900?' 'No.' — 'Did  you  ever  study  my  commentary, 

the  fullest  of  the  kind  yet  published  ? '— '  I  have  read  parts 

of   it.' '  Do    you    deny    that    my    verbatims    are    nearly 

identical  with  those  which  you  mostly  follow — as  nearly 
so  as  could  be  at  all  expected,  and  more  closely  far 
than  any  two  writers  upon  Veda  approach  each  other  ? '  f^ — 
No  answer  ; — '  and  that  I  give  in  alternative,  to  a  large 
extent,  the  very  especial  views  you  personally  adopt,  so 
half  accepting  them.'— No  answer.—'  Did  you  not  know 
that  the  authors  who  suggested  these  so-called  improve- 
ments openly  stated  at  times  that  they  had  no  knowledge 
of  Pahlavi  ?  '— '  No,  I  did  not  know.'—'  As  to  my  '  system  ' 
the  via  media — are  you  not  aware  that  no  writer  anywhere 

*  I  have,  for  instance,  recently  shown  that  the  senseless  -eu{sh)  of  a  gen. 
sg.  is  really  (<?  +  ti  =  0,  an  old  way  of  spelling  '  o  ')  -osh  =  Skt.  -os ;  a^-u  =  o;— 
so  -dish  {a-Vi  =  e)  is  really  -esh  =  Skt.  -es,  etc. ; — ahe  is  of  course  non-existent ; 
the  word  or  termination  is  -ahyd.  This  all  would  be  first  denied,  then 
later  filched  under  instigation,  as  so  usual. 

t  Hubschmann,  judging  from  his  sane  translations,  would  have 
rendered  much  of  the  Gathas  in  harmony  with  my  views. 


A    Chapter  in  A  vestas  History.  i6 


o 


any  longer  ventures  to  proceed  upon  any  other, — all  now- 
studying  the  Pahlavi,  Pers.,  and  Skt.,  yet  seeing  their 
imperfections  on  the  one  side,  with  their  wonderful  hints 
upon  the  other?' — 'That  is  so.' — 'Have  you  ever  fully 
mastered  my  Pahlavi  texts  and  translations?' — 'I  have 
read  the  translations,  and  to  some  extent  the  texts.' — 'Are 
you  not  aware  at  least  that  my  Avesta  translations  are,  or 
were,  the  first  yet  made  after  exhaustive  treatment  of  the 
Pahlavi,  Persian,  and  Sanskrit  ? — and  that  I  profess,  so  far 
as  possible,  to  give  the  main  antagonistic  views  of  my 
opposers  ancient  and  modern  ? ' — Vague  answer. — And  yet, 
though  you  have  never  read  my  book,  you  venture  to  look 
askance  upon  its  very  extensive  and  full  work  ! — No  answer. 
— Then  what  *  do  you  suppose  yourself  to  be  ? — How  do  I 
know  that  such  would  be  the  answers  ? — know  it ! — One 
of  them  came  to  me — of  the  most  venomous.  Inquiring 
what  he  knew  of  the  Pahlavi  ? — He  admitted  '  nothing  of 
it' — He  said  it  zvould  '  Extend  the  Study  too  Far'  \  Need- 
less to  examine  such  a  man  as  to  his  opinions.  His  master, 
so  he  said,  an  instigator,  declared  himself  '  unable  to  teach  the 
Pahlavi ' ; — so  another  of  the  pupils — both  in  my  presence. 
Never,  in  a  word,  has  a  book  of  such  extended  scope 
been  at  all  attempted!,  and  never,  as  I  add  with  still 
astonished  sensibility,  has  such  a  book  been  at  all  so  well 
received,  i.e.  never  without  a  clique  controlling  periodicals. 
That  its  edition  is  all  sold,  some  copies  at  three  times  the  first 
stated  value,  is  not  so  serious.  Subvention  to  a  new  edition 
has  been  offered  by  Government,  though  this  third  subvention 
has  not  been  as  yet  claimed  ; — if  time  be  spared  it  will  be. 

*  This  is  the  kind  of  creature  that  sometimes  ventures  to  talk  about 
a  *  scientific '  procedure. 

t  I  may  mention  just  here  as  it  occurs,  that  the  eminent  gentleman  who 
freely  asserted  that  he  had  worked  '  without  any  experience '  at  all  with 
the  Pahlavi — seemed  on  that  account  with  some  of  his  pupils  to  be  justly 
proud  of  his  grandiose  suggestions  as  being  especially  'original,'  but  at 
last  he  verged  upon  being  convinced.  The  'pointed  hint'  he  said 
approvingly — 'the  pointed  hint,'  alluding  to  the  Pahlavi,  Persian,  and 
Sanskrit  is  effective — as  giving  the  'general  indications.' 

1 1 


164  Our  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Pe^'sia. 

Annoyances  ! — yes — I  have  had  some  of  them,  if  Parsis 
wish  to  hear  them.  To  receive  a  valuable  book  with 
thanks  alone  implies  fair  favour^ible  treatment ; — but  what 
do  my  readers  think  of  a  man  who  will  ask  for  a  still 
unpublished  work,  full  of  well-weighed  fresh  materials  '  in- 
dispensable to  the  study,'  gain  '  great  service '  from  it,  write 
rtatteringly  in  return, — and  then  surreptitiously  oppose  it.* 
Some  got  copies  from  the  British  Government  and  tried 
to  sell  them,  knowing  that  each  copy  of  such  a  book  is 
important  for  expenses.  Another,  i8th  November  1892, 
thought  my  book  which  he  received  gratis,  '  umfasst  in 
der  that  das  (^esamte  Rilstzeiiz  zuin  studizun  dieser  so  un- 
endlich  sckwierizen  Texte  '  .  .  .  '  embraces  in  fact  the  com- 
plete  outfit  for  the  study  of  these  so  infinitely  difficult 
texts ' ; — yet  he  edited  a  defective  description  from  the  first- 
mentioned  person.  Another  actually  asked  me  with  em- 
phasis to  recommend  him  to  a  professorship,  the  most 
intimate  conceivable  of  all  possible  requests,  though  I  have 
such  now  and  again, — '  it  would  have  great  weight,'  so  he 
thought ; — and  later  cast  an  imbecility  !  etc.,  etc.f 

So  I  return  to  my  first  point — devout  gratitude  to  '  the 
God  of  Heaven.' 

Escaping  the  worse  than  murderous  fate  of  abler  men, 
I  have  been  spared  to  expound  the  most  important  lore  of 
all  Aryan  antiquity, — one  not  only  vitally  identical  with 
Vedic  interests,  but  which  has  told  immensely  upon  the 
history  of  Our  Own  Religion  with  its  boundless  connec- 
tions ; — and  one  which  must  shortly  form  an  integral  part 
in  all  serious  exeo^etical  Biblical  studies. 

*  One  of  these  gentlemen  wrote  me  to  decipher  a  passage  in  Pahlavi 
of  some  eighty  words,  not,  let  us  hope,  that  he  was  totally  ignorant  of  the 
meaning  of  every  individual  one  of  all  the  Pahlavi  characters.  This  would 
have  been  a  penal  offence,  as  he  was  receiving  a  stipend  from  a  respectable 
university. 

t  How — so  one  of  my  distinguished  correspondents  implies — can  such 
culprits  be  brought  to  justice? — 'Through  their  own  insignificance' — is  my 
only  answer; — fraud,  as  is  well  known,  universally  combines  against  ex- 
haustive, successful  labour. 


Various  Notices,  Remarks,  and  Letters.  165 


VARIOUS   NOTICES,   REMARKS,   AND   LETTERS. 

From  the  London  AthencBum  of  12th  April  1884. — 
'  Mr.  Mills  is  considered  at  present  the  best  authority  on 
the  true  interpretation  of  the  ancient  Gathas '  (so  Professor 
Max  Miiller,  re  the  first  distributed  edition,  full  publica- 
tion having  been  interrupted  by  the  engagement  to 
translate  the  thirty-first  volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the 
East  for  the  University  Press,  Nov.  1883). 

From  an  eminent  person,  the  instructor  of  all 
German  sanskritists,  re  the  first  distributed  edition 
of  the  Gathas,  1881.— 'L.  H.  M:  Ich  habe  ihr  werk  bis 
Seite    312,    alles    inzwischen    gedruckte,    also    Bogen    40 

und  folgende  wird  mir  sehr  erwunscht  sein. — Thr.  R 

R .      17th  Feb.  1884.' 

From  a  much-known  writer,  ist  February  1884, 
re  the  distributed  edition  of  the  Gathas.—'  Ich  habe  mit 
vero-nlio-en  o-ehort  dass  der  Erste  Band  ihres  Grossen 
Werkes  fertig  ist,  und  bin  sehr  gespannt  darauf :  Wie  kann 
mannsich  dasselbe  verschaffen  .  .  .'  5th  March  1884.— 
'  Besten  Dank  fiir  Ihr  werthvolles  Buch,  von  dem  ich 
mir,  wie  alien  die  sich  mit  den  Gathas  beschaftigen,  sehr 
viel  Nutzen  verspreche  .  .  .'     Yet  see  p.  164. 

Deutshe  Literatur  Zeitung,  24th  September  1887,  of 
S.B.E.  xxxi. — '.  .  .  Ansichten  wol  erwogen.'     (Professor 

Spiegel.) 

From  Professor  Dr.  Eugen  Wilhelm  of  Jena,  April 
1888  (sent  for  publication).— '  It  is  no  longer  doubted 
that  we  have  in  the  Avesta  essentially  the  religion  which 
prevailed  in  Persia  when  Cyrus  came  into  contact  with 
the  Jews.  The  Gathas  form  the  most  difftcult  part  of 
the  Avesta,  as  well  as  the  oldest  and  most  important. 
And  this  circumstance  induced  Dr.  Mills,  during  a  period 
of  ten  (then  nearer  sixteen)  years,  to  devote  unusual  attention 
to  them  .  .  .  The  undersigned,  who  has  become  acquainted 
with  particular  sections  of  this  work,   and   has  examined 


1 66  Ou7'  Oivn  Reliction  in  Ancient  Persia. 

them  from  every  point  of  view,  knows  from  personal 
observation  with  what  extraordinary  thoroughness  and 
conscientiousness  {mit  welcher  ausserordentlichen  Griind- 
lichkeit  tmd  Gewissenhaftigkeit)  Dr.  Mills  has  proceeded 
in  its  composition.' 

Copy  of  an  autograph  letter  from  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E. 
Gladstone  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  L.  H.  Mills,  first  printed  by 
advice,  and  for  circulation  among  friends  : — 

'Hawarden,  6M  October  1891. 

'  My  Dear  Sir, — You  have  done  me  very  great  honour 
by  sending  me  your  translation  from  the  Zend  Avesta, 
and  I  have  profited  greatly  this  morning  by  reading 
in  your  Preface  and  Introduction.  Though  I  am  only 
in  the  outer  court  of  the  temple  of  Philology,  I  am  sensible 
of  the  extraordinary  interest  attaching  to  the  Zoroastrian 
religion,  and  grateful  to  those  who,  like  you,  give  us  such 
aid  in  understanding  it. 

'  I  was  led  to  mention  it,  and  refer  to  some  authorities 
for  the  purpose  of  throwing  light  upon  the  question 
whether  the  belief  in  a  future  life  gained  or  lost  ground 
with  the  lapse  of  time.  Only  in  the  case  of  Greece  have 
I  any  knowledge  of  the  quellen,  and  there  I  think  that 
both  this  doctrine,  and  religion  generally  as  an  influence, 
lost  greatly  between  the  Homeric  and  the  Classical 
ages.  Some  small  presumptions  appeared  to  exist  on 
behalf  of  the  belief  that  in  Persia  also  [in  regard  to]  the 
future  life,  and  the  retribution  with  which  it  was  there 
combined,  there  was  a  similar  downward  process. 

'  I  hope  I  have  not  stated  this  too  boldly,  or  used  any 
arts  to  disguise  my  ignorance. 

'  Accept  my  best  thanks  for  your  kindness.  Perhaps 
if  I  am  able  again  to  visit  Oxford  you  will  allow  me 
to  profit  by  your  conversation,  and  meantime  let  me 
remain,  faithfully  yours,  W.   E.  Gladstone.' 

L.   H.  Mills,  Esq.  [sic]. 


Varioics  Notices,  Remarks,  and  Letters.  167 

\_Firsi  reprinted  for  Distribution  ainoftg  Friends. '\ 

Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  the  author  of  The  Light  of  Asia, 
authorised  his  name  to  appear  as  a  writer  of  the  following 
notice  in  the  London  Daily  Telegraph.  It  appeared  in 
the  issue  of  loth  August  1894.  Sir  Edwin  was  well 
acquainted  with  the  history  of  Zoroastrian  science,  and 
has  exerted  no  little  influence  upon  it. 

'  A  book  of  vast  learning  and  high  archaeological  value, 
lately  issued,  has  been  much  too  silently  passed  over  by 
scholars  and  critics.*  It  is  that  monumental  work  by 
Dr.  Lawrence  Mills  of  Oxford,  entitled  A  Study  of  the 
Five  Zarathushtrian  {Zoroastrian)  Gat  has,  with  Texts  and 
Translations.  Brought  out  with  the  assistance  of  the 
Indian  Secretary  of  State,  the  volume  is  indispensable 
to  students  of  Zend  literature  and  theology.  In  1876 
Dr.  Mills  turned  his  attention  to  the  great  subject  of  his 
tome.  He  first  translates  the  Gathic  texts  into  Sanskrit  f, 
word  for  word  ;  and  next,  in  order  to  be  sure  of  significa- 
tions, the  erudite  doctor  sets  himself  to  examine  the 
Pahlavi  Commentaries,  collating  all  the  known  manuscripts 
and  deciphering  their  at  times  almost  inscrutable  characters. 
Side  by  side  with  these  he  also  translates  and  edits 
the    Parsi-persian    manuscripts.       He    next    re-edits    the 

*  The  London  Athenceum,  as  cited  above. 

The  New  York  Nation  of  12th  July  1888  says  (of  the  old  edition): 
'  A  boon  to  all  scholars.' 

The  Gottingishe  Gelehrte  Aiizeigen,  as  cited  above. 

The  Revue  Critique  of  Paris,  as  cited  above. 

The  New  York  Nation  of  21st  June  1894  says:  'Scholars  will  no 
longer  have  an  excuse  for  neglecting  the  Pahlavi  Commentaries.' 

The  Times  of  India  of  22nd  September  1894  says  :  '  The  great  work  now 
before  us,  which  may  be  truly  called  monumental.' 

t  Translations  into  Sanskrit  are  (as  Dr.  M.  thinks)  a  si?ie  qua  nan 
to  a  complete  treatment.  Dr.  Mills'  translation  of  Yasna  XXVIII.  into 
Sanskrit  has  the  highest  possible  sanction,  as  it  appears  in  the  Festgruss, 
or  volume  of  short  pieces,  dedicated  by  a  select  number  of  German 
Sanskritists  to  the  eminent  Professor  R.  von  Roth,  first  Vedist  of  Germany, 
on  the  occasion  of  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  his  doctorate. 


1 68  Otir  Oivn  Religion  in  Ancient  Persia. 

Sanskrit  Commentary  of  Neryosangh,  and  after  accumu- 
lating all  that  wealth  of  material,  he  finally  produces 
what  may  be  called  the  finished  fiower  of  this  massive 
version.  .  .  .  Dr.  Mills  has  given  to  the  world  of  learning 
the  superb  and  scholarly  volume,  which  is  an  honour  to 
the  University  of  Oxford,  while  it  establishes  the  author 
as  standing  as  the  head  of  Zoroastrian  expositors.  This 
is  not  the  place  in  which  to  examine  minutely  the  difficult 
pages  of  such  a  work ;  but  it  would  not  be  decorous  to 
allow  it  to  appear  without  the  salutation  due  from  all 
Orientalists  to  the  completion  of  so  noble  a  toil  in  the 
fields  of  Eastern  classics.' 


APPENDIX. 

TWELFTH   LECTURE. 

GOD  HYPOTHETICALLY  CONTEMPLATED  AS  MORE  THAN  PER- 
SONAL—THAT IS  TO  SAY,  AS  ALMIGHTY,  UNLIMITED; 
OUR    IDEAS    OF    HIM    DEFINED    BY    DIFFERENTIATION.* 

Underlying  Principles. 
'  In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth.' 

My  object  in  reproducing  these  Lectures,  now  some 
five  years  old,  is  to  heighten,  purify,  and  increase  our 
adoring  love  of  the  One  merciful,  superpersonal,  unlimited 
God,— and  to  do  so  we  must  disentangle  some  dangerous 
misconceptions  with  regard  to  Him.  We  do  this  by 
differentiation— that  is  to  say,  we  must  make  clear  what 
our  idea  of  Him  is  by  fixing  firmly  in  our  convictions  what 
'  our  idea  '  of  Him  is  not.  And  first  of  all  we  must  dispel 
an  illusion  into  which  we  have  been  most  naturally  led,  and 
which  indeed  seems  to  be  a  tendency  which  we  can  some- 
times hardly  resist  when  we  allow  ourselves  to  express  our 
passionate  devotion,— it  is  the  impression  that  our  God  is 
merely  a  person  in  the  lower,  genial  acceptation  of  the 
term,  so  misinterpreting  the  language  of  our  leading  prayer, 
which  has  become  so  sacrosanct  in  every  syllable.  But 
the  time  has  surely  come  when  we  can  with  safety  make 
known  some  vital  distinctions  just  here. 

(i)  To  be  a  person  in  the  words  of  ordinary  pre- 
cision   is  to  be  a   'subject'   which    can    be  an    object    to 

*  This  Lecture,  as  it  here  appears  from  page  176,  was  printed  in  The 

Open  Court  o'iyi2SQ)n\<^oZ. 
^  169 


I  JO  Appendix. 

itself.     Nothing  can  be  an  object  to  any  sane  intelligence, 
— not  even  one's  self — which  cannot  be  defined, — definition 
by  its  very  form  meaning  the  fixing  of  -a.  finis  beyond  which 
an  object  does  not  and  cannot  extend.      So  that  to  be  'a 
person'    in    our    stricter    sense    of    the    matter    is    to    be 
'  limited  ' ; — the  expression  '  infinite  Person,'  though  it  has 
been   at    times  made  use  of  with  good  enough  intention, 
would  be  pure  nonsense.       To  worship  a  limited  person, 
however  otherwise  exalted,  would  be  to   commit    idolatry 
in  the  form  of  nature-worship, — for  such  a  person  would  be 
an  object  in  nature.     We  could  never  truthfully  make  use 
of  such  words  as  'almighty,'   'omniscient,'  'omnipresent,' 
with  reference  to  him  ; — we  could  only  use  the  prefix  '  all ' 
with  reference  to  his  character,  saying  the  'all-holy,'  'all- 
merciful,'  but  we  could  not  apply  the  particle  before  any 
term    implying  power,  for  '  omnipotence '  includes  '  omni- 
science '  and  '  omnipresence.'     Such  a  definable  and  there- 
fore limited  being    might  conceivably  be  supreme  among 
the  objects  of  nature,  and  so  everlasting — under  the  Un- 
limited   Superpersonal ;    but    he    would    be    without    un- 
limited poiver,  and    to    make    our    prayers    to    him    as    if 
to    an    Unlimited  Being  would    be   not    only  meaningless 
but  perhaps  also  profane, — it  would  contravene  the  First 
Commandment.     Our  Adorable  and  Adored  One,  Almighty, 
Omnipresent,  Omniscient,  and  Unlimited  is  therefore  super- 
personal, — that    is    to    say,    our    idea    of    Him    goes    out 
beyond   our    idea    of    human    or   angelic    personality.     A 
person,  as  we  have  seen,  can  be  defined  and  so  understood, 
— but    our    adored-superpersonal-Unlimited    One    passeth 
understanding. 

(2)  Is  He — our  Deity — the  Universe  itself? — forbid 
the  sacrilege, — yet  there  have  been  parties  known  to  hold 
that  the  two  ideas — the  '  Universe  of  Nature  '  and  '  Deity  ' — 
coincide,  and  we  must  ask  the  question  further  to 
define  Him  by  showing  what  He  is  not.  What,  then,  is  the 
material,  intellectual  Universe? — for  'intellect'  inheres  in 
nature. — The   natural,  physical,  material,    and    intellectual 


God  as  Almighty,  mo7^e  than  Personal,  Illimitable.     171 

Universe  seems,  as  we  generally  understand  it,  to  be  an 
inconceivably  extended  but  not  unlimited  mass  of  vivified 
electron-atoms      endowed— under      the      Unlimited— with 
interior   motive-force,  and    having  within  it   all  we    know 
of  majesty,  design,  beauty,  and— of  grief.      Is  it  stationary 
within    itself?— an   inquirer    may    ask.— On    the    contrary, 
motion    is    its    life,— the    place-changing    of   its    elemental 
electrons  builds  up  all  that  we  see  of  magnificence  or  charm. 
Has    it    ever    begun'^. — Never   of   itself   except  under    the 
all-causing,    all-permitting    will   of   the    Unlimited     Super- 
personal.      Did  it  ever  7ieed  to  be  begnnl—'^ot  of  its  own 
nature    or    self— under  the  Unlimited.     Does    it    ever  i7i- 
crease  ? — Not  by  one  measurable  fraction  of  an  atom — save 
for  Him.     Can  it  ever  increase  ?— Not  of  its  own  nature. 
Does    it    ever    decrease?  —  In    no    particular.       Can    it 
ever     decrease? — Not    by    any    infinitesimal    particle  — 
except    under     Him.      Do    its    elemental     electron-atoms 
ever    change    in    their    essence?— Not    to    the    slightest 
conceivable    degree    of  measure.       Has  the    course   of  its 
incessant  interior  place-changing  of  atoms  ever  been  de- 
flected or  diverted  ?— Never— save  under   His  will.     Can 
it  and  will  it  be  ever  so  deflected   or   diverted  ?— Never 
—save  as  He  so  wills.     Will  it  ever  end  ?— Never  of  itself. 
Can   it  ever  end?— Never — save   as    He   puts    forth    His 
annihilating  power. 

Nature,  then, — that  is  to  say,  the  Universe  of  Nature, — 
is  under  His  almighty  will  an  unbroken  and  unbreakable 
chain  of  causality  unbeginning — save  for  Him,  unbegun — 
—save  for  Him,  indivertible— save  for  Him,  unending 
in  its  ever-moving  but  within  themselves  never-changing 
elements.  Beyond  that  self-moving  circle  science  does 
not  penetrate  ;— He  Himself— forbid  the  thought— is,  as 
so  often  said,  not  within  this  nature- Universe,  nor  is 
He   the  object    of  its   ken  ;— He  is   the   object  only  of  its 

faith. 

(3)   What  is   His    'permission'^.      If  the  Universe    of 
Nature  is  in  itself  complete,  of  its  own  nature  unbegun  and 


172  Appendix. 

unending,  '  save  under  Him  ' — what  is  the  meaning  of  such 
a  qualification  ? 

This  qualification  necessarily  results  from  our  religious 
hypothesis. 

We    believe    in    an    omnipotent    and    therefore    super- 
personal    God,    who    dominates    all    existing    and    so    all 
imaginable  possibilities.— But  if  an  object  great  or  small 
is  unbegun  and  unending,  how  can  it  be  and  how  has  it 
been    under    His    supernatural    power?     The    answer    is 
that    the    sub-eternity — so    to     speak — of    the     physical- 
intellectual    Universe   cannot   interfere    with    the   absolute 
supreme  eternity  of  an  unlimited,  illimitable,  superpersonal 
God — so  believed  in  upon  our  'scheme  of  faith.'     If  one 
eternity  can  exist,  as  science  so  well  asserts,  why  may  we 
not  accept  another,  if,  as  we  so  religiously  believe,  the  two 
would    be    conceivable.'*     [(For    our   whole   concept,    from 
root  to  blossom,   from  corner-stone  to  pinnacle,   is  reared 
upon  the  illimitable  supernatural  power  in  the  super-scientific 
masonry  of  devotion  ; — and  Nature's  course  seems  some- 
times interrupted.)]     Even  as  recognised  by  science  there 
might  be   two   or   indefinitely  more  objects,  unbegun  but 
for    Him, — unending    but    for    Him, — and   yet    each    such 
an  one  might  be  wholly  independent  of  the  others,  save 
from    similar   particular   interior   elements   and   conditions. 
If,    therefore,    two    or    more    objects    can    be    thus    even 
in    the    eye    of  science    unbegun,    and    yet    mutually    in- 
dependent,  then  by  presumption  at  least  there  should  be 
no  insanity  nor  difficulty  in  our  religiously  accepting  as   an 
article  of  faith  the  existence  of  two  vast  things  so  different  as 
God  and  His   Universe,  both  unbegun,  the  latter  so  only 
under  Him — for  we  are  not  at  this  point,  let  me  repeatedly 
emphasise,  proceeding  upon  the  lines  of  finite  science. 

We  do  not  proclaim  a  God  ex  machina  {sic,  with  Vol- 
taire (?)).  We  simply  mean  that  we  intend  and  are  deter- 
mined to  maintain  our  devoted  belief  in  the  superpersonal 
indefinable  super-existence  of  our  God.  This  is  the  point 
where  the  question  again  naturally  arises  : — since  you  think 


God  as  Almighty,  more  than  Personal,  Illifnitable.     173 

with  science  that  the  Universe  of  Nature  may  be,  ought 
to  be,  and  is  naturally  and  in  itself— but  under  Him— un- 
begun, what  particularly  is  then  the  meaning  and  bearing  of 
His  believed-in,  eternal,  all-encompassing  omnipotence,  and 
of  the  constantly  recurring  expression,  'under  Him  '  ? — the 
question  has  been  already  put ;  I  enlarge  upon  it  merely. 
The  pre-supposed  answer  obviously  is,  that  as  the  eternity  of 
one  object  does  not  interfere  with  the  eternity  of  another, 
even  in  scientific  distinctions  (see  above),  so  the  supersensual 
illimitable  omnipotence  of  a  Supreme  religiously-believed- 
in  God  may — in  religious  belief  and  in  our  well-meaning 
scheme  —  very  well  envelop,  surround,  interpenetrate, 
and  maintain  the  otherwise  self-sufficient  unbegun  and 
unbeginning  existence  of  a  lesser  object  recognised  by 
science — that  is  to  say,  it  may  be  rationally  so  believed 
and  held  in  the  sense  of  a  quasi-unreasoning,  all-giving, 
illimitable  faith.  Nothing  could  be  clearer  ;— the  believed- 
in  God,  supersensual,  Himself  beyond  all  our  knowledge, 
beyond  all  our  measure  and  calculation,  known  to  us  by 
faith  alone  with  a  spiritual  knowledge,  conceived  of  as 
omnipotent  by  belief  alone— could,  did,  and  shall  for  ever 
hold  all  things  outside  Himself  in  His  almighty  power 
of  permission,  for  sustenance  and  defence,  if  aught  were 
able  to  attack  them.  Surely  if  it  be  not  insane  for  us 
to  accept  the  existence  (or  '  being ')  of  a  God  illimitable, 
beyond  our  ken,  it  is  likewise  not  religiously  irrational 
for  us  to  hold  to  His  Szipreme  Permission,  as  being  under 
all,  about  all,  and  over  all  existing  and  even  everlasting 
things,  even  under,  about,  and  over  such  as  have  been 
otherwise  of  their  own  nature  unbegun. 

[(It  will  be  seen  that  the  idea  which  pervades  my  whole 
discussion  of  the  scheme  is  to  decide  just  where  to  place 
the  Miracle. — Too  hastily  has  science  cast  off  all  belief 
in  Miracle,  inattentive  to  the  long  reports  of  closest  ob- 
servations. Things  which  cannot  be  accounted  for  have  no 
doubt  occurred  ; — i.e.  not  yet  accounted  for ; — until  science 
has  explained  such-like  as  the  product  of  hitherto  undis- 


174  Appendix. 

covered  forces  we  feel  bound  to  acquiesce  in  the  statements 
referred  to  ; — the  apparently  supernatural  has  indeed  taken 
place.  If  such  quasi-supernatural  effects  can  be  manifested, 
who  can  tell  what  their  limits  may  be  ? — I  find  my  '  super- 
natural '  in  the  thought  of  the  Omnipotent  God  hyper- 
personal — all-holy.  If  either  the  Universe  or  one  microbe 
existed  to  all  eternity  as  unbegun,  then  He  existed  with 
it  still  potentially  omnipotent; — in  such  a  case  He  has 
continuously  willed  its  continuous  existence — He  has  con- 
tinuously encompassed  and  continuously  permitted  all  that 
it  is  as  begun  or  unbegun.  Such  is  His  'Permission'; 
— and  the  thought  leads  us  at  once  and  again  on  to  its  quasi- 
identical  fellow-concept  'Creation.')] 

(4)  What  is  Creation  ?,  an  idea  so  closely  interwoven  here. 
The  creation  of  any  object  whatsoever  means  an  originat- 
ing and  promotive  act  (?),  breaking  in  upon  the  otherwise 
unbreakable  chain  of  causality  —  under  the  Unlimited 
Superpersonal ; — that  is  to  say,  it  is  a  '  miracle,'  like  accident 
and  other  manifestations  of  '  providence '  ; — it  is  outside 
the  chain  of  the  otherwise — save  for  Him — invariable 
course  of  nature.  To  say  that  a  Universe  which  was  never 
begun  was  created  even  by  the  Unlimited  Superpersonal 
would  be  a  foolish  contradiction  in  terms  ; — but  it  is  not 
a  contradiction  in  terms  to  say  that  an  Unlimited  Being, 
superpersonal,  almighty,  could  create  a  physical-intellectual 
Universe  whose  forces  were  balanced  and  which  was, 
under  Him,  self-contained  and  also  self-moved, — and 
which  by  its  own  nature  did  not  therefore  need  ever  to 
have  been  begun,  or  to  end  ?  ; — and  this  is  all  that  I  have 
now  asserted,  though  it  seems  to  introduce  a  new  dis- 
tinction. Surely  the  Unlimited  Power,  almighty,  super- 
personal,  if  it — or  He — exists  at  all,  could  and  might  create 
anythingexcept  a  contradiction ; — and  therefore  He  couldand 
might  create  such  a  self-moved  system,  as  such  a  system  is 
not  only  thinkable  but  has  been  almost  verified  by  science. 
And  it  is  my  opinion  that  our  so  familiar  material-in- 
tellectual-universal nature  may  well  be  of  such  a  character, 


God  as  Almighty,  more  than  Personal,  Illimitable.     175 

— under  Him, — and  that  He  may  well  have  miraculously 
created  a  substance-matter  of  the  Universe  which  other- 
wise— under  Him — needed  not  of  itself  to  begin,  nor  to 
change,  nor  end ; — and  this  by  no  means  involves  an 
actual  non-beginning,  though — as  seen  above — by  the 
exercise  of  an  unlimited  all-wise  permissive  power — a  state 
of  non-origin  and  unlimited  permanence  past  and  future 
mig-ht  be  conceivable  and  mio^ht  exist ; — and  I  have  the 
rio-ht  relieiously  to  believe  either  the  one  or  the  other 
of  these  hypotheses. 

So  also  with  reference  to  the  incessant  place-changing 
of  the  otherwise   unchanging  and  unchangeable  electron- 
atoms  of  the  universe  which  alone  builds  up  the  world's 
phenomena, — to  interfere  beneficently  and  promotively  in 
this  otherwise  unchangeable  course  would  be  of  the  nature 
of  sub-creation  and  of  miracle — though  naturally  not  upon 
such  an  immense  scale  as  the  almost  inconceivable  universal 
miraculous    creation    of   the    self-moved    elements    of   the 
nature-Universe    itself; — as  the    greater    creative    miracle 
may  have  taken  place,  so  may  the  lesser.     And  may  not 
this    indeed    have    been — as    one    may    well    alternatively 
suppose — the    nature    of    that    '  creation '    so    wonderfully 
depicted  in  Genesis  the  first.     That  exquisite  piece   may 
well  indeed  have  been  intended  to  portray  in  poetic  lines 
an  original  and  miraculous  creation  of  the  eternal  elemental- 
substance    of    the    nature-Universe    itself, — but    there    is 
nothing  irreverent  and  much   that  may   be  useful   in    the 
alternative  view  that  it  depicts  with  unspeakable  beauty 
the    lesser   form  of  the  creation-miracle, — that  is  to    say, 
that  it  represents  only  a  promotive  and  so  creative  inter- 
ference  with    the   otherwise    unchangeable    course    of   the 
developments  of  nature,   unless  indeed  it  be  intended  as 
a  panoramic  poetical  representation  of  the  developments  of 
Nature  entirely  aside  from  miracle  and  creation — and  all  this, 
let  me  repeat,  seems  ever  the  more  seriously  practical  be- 
cause greater  or  less  impressive  manifestations  of  a  seemingly 
miraculous  creative  element  have  been  afforded  in  events 


1^6  Appendix. 

which  have  been  credibly  attested  by  unquestionably 
veracious  witnesses  as  inexplicable, — and  also  in  what 
may  be  sometimes  called  'accident'  or  '  providence.' 

Such  are  the  principles  which  underlie  the  following 
Lectures, 

But  let  me  again  once  more  most  emphatically  repeat 
that  the  above  remarks  and  those  which  follow  concern 
only  our  ow7i  ideas  as  to  these  things,  not  presuming  to 
discuss  the  things  themselves — least  of  all  the  Super- 
personal  Unlimited.  And  yet  still  further  let  me  guard 
myself  by  saying  that  I  here  make  only  positive  assertions 
as  to  what  seems  to  science  to  be  the  truth  in  regard  to  the 
balance  of  universal  Nature,  its  self-contained  self-motion, 

I  do  not  attempt  to  dogmatise.  I  endeavour  to  define 
the  ideas  of  these  things  approximately  only  by  defining 
more  and  more  closely  the  things  which  they  are  not ; — and 
from  this  I  proceed  by  negatives  to  bring  out  ever  clearer 
His  adorable  Godhead  and  His  Truth. 

First,  and  in  due  course  next  after  the  above,  in  order  to 
bring  into  clearer  light  my  ideal  view  of  Him,  I  strive  to 
depict  as  best  I  can  that  most  godlike  of  all  Nature's  forces 
which   some  seem  indeed  at  times  to  have  confused  with 

Him, I  mean  that  wonderful  thing  called  '  Nature's  Mind,' 

The  clearer  we  can  bring  this  out  as  super-ideal  in  its 
attractiveness  while  separate  from  Him,  the  clearer  again 
we  can  extend  and  enliven  our  feeble  concept  of  Himself; 

sublime  as  we  can  show  an  exalted  thing  to  be.  He  is 

ever  still  more  glorious,  yet  beyond. 

The  Vast  Mind-Force  in  Nature  as  a  Thing 
Unspeakable  in   Majesty  and  Joy.* 

Yes,  there  is  in  Nature  this  one    incomparable  Power, 

passing     imagination,     baffling     calculation.         It     hardly 

*  This  portion  of  the  Lecture  was  printed  in  The  Open  Court  of 
September  1907. 


God  as  Ahnighty,   more  than  Personal,  Illimitable.     177 

approaches  in  its  mystery  and  grandeur  our  ideas  of  the 
UnHmited  Superpersonal  Himself,  but,  if  personal,  it  would 
indeed  almost  seem  to  identify  itself  with  our  old  Nature- 
God,  the  merely  personal,  not-almighty,  if  all-loving.  And 
just  in  so  far  as  we  can  make  this  unspeakable  object  clear 
and  vivid  to  ourselves,  and  show  it  to  be  separate  from 
Him  while  it  is  yet  included  within  His  omnipresence  and 
omnipotence — ^just  in  so  far,  as  said  above,  do  we  add  to 
our  adoring  concept  of  Himself.  * 

This  Reason-Mind-Force  in  all  Nature,  pervading  as  it 
is  under  the  unlimited,  all-energising,  all-guiding,  comes 
ever  clearest  to  its  repeated  focus  in  the  marvellous  Intent,! 
— the  plan,  the  design.  Of  all  things  under  Him  it  also 
seems  the  very  one  toward  which  we  evermore  feel 
naturally  constrained  to  draw  near  and  ever  nearer.  So 
vast  it  is  and  yet  so  closely  intricate  that  neither  our 
measuring  reach  nor  our  counting  iterations,  neither  our 
analyses  nor  yet  our  syntheses,  seem  ever  able  even  to 
approach  its  nearest  bounds  ; — we  seem  to  merely  feel  it, 
though  with  rapture  ; — ever  beginning  as  it  is  with  all  other 
Nature,  and  also,  save  for  Him,  a  something"  unbeo-un — 
self-moving  like  the  rest.  We  can  hardly  even  say  that  it 
comes  most  to  consciousness  in  man  ;■ — for  how  many 
grades  of  intellect  may  there  not  be  beyond  us  and  above 
us,  as  there  are  so  many — as  we  think — beneath  us  ?  It 
moves  about  us  everywhere,  steadily,  impressively,  in  the 
pencillings  of  leaves,  in  the  growths  of  embryos  as  in 
the  sidereal  mathematics, — for  each  '  half-vivified '  orb  of 
whatsoever  grade  seems  actuated  by  this  Universal 
thing.  Half-vivified,  indeed ! — We  might  once  well  have 
reserved  our  qualifying  fraction — for  the  greater  Greeks — 
some  of  them — thought  them  to  be  literally  alive.  Soft 
splendours  with  their  mighty  centres, — each  seems  to 
know  and  keep  so  exactly  its  reasoned  course — with  waste 
shed  slowly  off,  at  last  regathered.  So  in  their  last  so- 
called    originating   fusion — all    followed    the    inspiring    all- 

*  By  one  more  beatific  thing  beneath  Him.  f  Aristotle. 


178  Appendix. 

Thought,  finding  each  his  place ; — one  must  be  a  sun, 
others  planets  in  its  system  ; — the  elements  in  each  must  be 
of  exactest  measure,  weight,  and  even  climate.  So  the 
plutonic  rocks  in  each  as  truly  as  the  atmospheres  follow 
the  same  great  Idea,  hardening  duly  from  their  molten 
semi-fluid  state — diamonds  centring  as  the  bubbles  ball 
and  dance  ; — every  object,  from  the  most  enormous  to  the 
most  minute,  seems  interadjusted  to  all  others.  Reason,  as 
the  mind-soul,  inspires  most  of  all — we  think — the  physically 
living, — even  the  lower  forms  of  them  ; — they  know  from 
instinctive  miracle  things  hid  from  man,  though  he  too  has 
his  innings.  Wild  herds  forestall  the  floods  ; — the  albatross 
knows  just  where  to  strike  her  path  for  remotest  home 
when  man  does  not  even  know  his  own  interests  ; — how 
does  the  butterfly  find  his  mate,  or  the  calf  his  mother's 
teats  ?  The  crocodile — do  they  tell  us  ? — knows  just 
where  to  lay  her  eggs  beyond  the  reach  of  Nilus; — the 
young  elephant  shelters  himself  in  his  mother's  lee — how- 
does  he  know  that  he  is  safe  there  ?, — the  very  chick  from 
the  shell  flies  to  a  leaf  when  the  cock-bird  sounds  for  the 
hawk.  All  being  seems  to  throb  with  the  thought-force 
intercommunicated, — while  man,  seemingly  least  instinctive 
of  them  all,  can  measure  the  heavens  and  the  seas — 
even  soul.  All  is  stored  experience,  centring  and  then 
pushing  on  throughout  ages ; — but  how  did  it  all 
originate, — if  ever  ?  Not  only  Mind  but  Moral  Mind  is 
everywhere  ; — recall  that  miracle  of  sweetness  the  mother- 
love  ; — see  too  the  hate  and  the  revenge — incomprehensible 
— all  of  it.  Attractions  of  gravitation  have  Reason  in  them 
— within  all,  above  all,  through  all — through  them  and  under 
Him  our  nature-Universe  is  one  vast  breathing  mass  of 
sympathy  and  power,  a  very  Cosmos  outfolding  itself  in 
myriad  forms,  infolding  itself  again ; — the  microscope 
reveals  systems  as  intricate  as  the  telescope.  Such  is  the 
Mind-Force — under  Him — throughout  all  nature.  We 
cannot  very  well  adore  it  in  the  lesser  sense,  for  it  is  not  a 
person,  nor   a   sub-person,    nor   yet   a   super-person.     W^e 


God  as  Almighty,  moi'e  than  Personal,  Illimitable.     179 

cannot  supplicate  it,  for  it  \s  part  of  our  very  selves — suppli- 
cation here  would  be  mere  fixed  self-resolve — nor  can  we  hope 
much  from  it,  for  it  is  immovable.  Never  has  it  varied, 
not  even  to  entreaty,  from  all  a  past  eternity  save 
through  Him — so  with  the  rest, — nor  shall  it  ever  vary  to 
the  endless  coming  ages.  I  call  it  freely  with  some  speech- 
figure,  'great  Nature's  Soul,' — so  with  the  Greeks, — the 
great  soul  of  all  reasoned  life  and  all  life's  reasoning,  involv- 
ing all  it  has  of  strength,  joy,  sorrows,  with  Justice  ;  * — 
Sovereign  Rulet  is  there  in  it, — and  above  all  \\\^XQ\'=,cBsthetik 
— for  we  are  parts  of  a  world  all  calm  with  beauty,  throb- 
binof  with  bright  wishes  based  on  truth  and  love.t  What 
else  in  all  Nature  can  approach  it ; — it  seems  all  Nature's 
better  self  in  one.  Do  we  then  think  it  well  to  turn  our 
backs  upon  it,  this  so  ill-called  '  poor '  human  and  '  poor  ' 
anofelic  '  reason,'  so  limited  ? — Do  we  think  it  decent  so  to 
do  ?  Does  He — the  Unlimited — turn  His  back  upon  it? — 
Our  faith-God  Ideal  turn  His  back  on  Reason  ! — the  Holy 
One  of  all- Holies  turn  His  back  on  all  that  holds  the 
world  non-maniac,  indifferent  to  all  that  love  is  nourish- 
ing, to  all  that  truth  is  defending,  to  all  that  mercy  is 
redeeming ! — Ah  no!  our  faith-God  Ideal,  our  One  ever 
supremely  to  be  adored,  is  not  indifferent  to  this  ; — much 
less  is  He  adverse  to  it — atrocious  thought.  He  in  fact 
stands  ideally  related  to  it ; — in  shutting  out  all  Nature's 
realm  from  His,  I  only  mean  to  shut  out  profanely  pushed 
identities. 

His  whole  supreme  Heart,  although  ideally  beyond 
our  ken  or  intellect,  still  yearns  to  it  (as,  with  devout 
speech-figure,  we  may  say), — still  yearns  in  a  sub-sense 
over  it.  He  adores  it  too,  if  so  we  can  imagine,  just  as 
Ahura  burned  sacrifice  to  Mithra — as  kings  call  nobles 
'  Lords.'  It  is  the  all-in-all  in  our  rich  world  of  power 
and  truth, — and  as  our  Supreme  Ideal  One  reveres  it,  so 
should  we  ! 

*  Asha.  t  Khshathra.  %  Vohumanah. 


12 


1 80  Api)endix. 


The  Word  is  Nigh  Thee. 

It  does  not  hold  itself  aloof  in  awful  distance  far  beyond, 
away  from  us,  aloft ; — it  is  close  around  us  as  a  sweeping 
sea,  yet  touching  each  of  us  with  lightest  finger,  while  it 
stares  us  in  the  very  face.  Why  should  we  not  in  one 
fond  blind  sense  pour  out  our  loving  wonder  toward  it, 
though  it  be  not '  personal '  in  any  sense  ?  He,  our  Supreme 
Ideal  One  delights  in  it,  as  we  may  devoutly  say  again, — 
and  so  may  we ; — but  to  do  so  we  must  define  it  from 
other  Nature,  and  most  of  all  from  Him. 


THIRTEENTH    LECTURE. 


GOD    AS    ALMIGHTY,    SUPERPERSONAL,    ALL-HOLY,    FURTHER 
DEFINED    FROM    UNIVERSAL    NATURE.* 


I  HAVE  endeavoured  in  the  Twelfth  Lecture  to  gather 
up  my  revering  thoughts  toward  some  great  things,  godUke, 
yet  not  of  God's  essence,  and  especially  as  regards  that  most 
majestic  and  most  tender  of  things  thinkable — the  once- 
called  'World's  Soul.'  Let  us  now  consider  for  a  moment 
more  closely  than  we  have  above,  and  yet  still  in  general, 
the  other  phases  of  that  nature-Universe  of  which  the 
world-soul  is  in  one  sense  of  it  the  life ; — for  we  can  make 
a  distinction  between  a  force,  however  widely  active,  and 
the  object,  however  immense,  which  it  inspires,  though 
the  endeared  concept  just  named  above  comes  back  to 
us  with  welcome  persistence  and  at  every  step. 

What  is  then  again  and  still  more  definitely  the 
physical-intellectual  Universe  of  Nature? 

Here  at  once — as  I  regret  to  say — a  petty,  if  amazing, 
question  meets  us — 'amazing  only '  of  the  questioner.  Is 
not — so  it  has  been  astonishingly  asked — is  not  the  physical 
Universe  infinite — that  is  to  say,  as  extended  in  space  ? 
Such  an  inquiry  would  be  like  that  re  the  '  infinite  person '  ; 
see  above.  It  reminds  one  of  that  other  sage  question 
sometimes  put  into  the  mouths  of  pupils  as  to  what  'state' 
an  object  is  in  ? — meaning  by  this  whether  an  object  is 
in  a  '  state  of  motion  '  or  a  '  state  of  rest.' — Of  course  such 
'  states '  as  '  motion  '  or  '  rest '  are  entirely  relative  to  other 
bodies  within  the  same  sphere  in  Nature; — the  'rest'  or 

*This  Lecture,  from  page  182,  was  published  in   The  Open  Court  of 

April  1908,  and  has  been  used  in  Instructional  Lectures  since. 

181 


1 82  Appendix. 

'motion'  of  the  Universe  itself  in  the  empty  'nothing' 
outside  itself  has  no  meaning.  Even  in  the  matter  of 
relative  rest  or  motion,  it  may  be  seriously  doubted 
whether  there  is  any  such  thing  as  absolute  rest,  or 
anything  more  than  approximate  rest,  even  within  the 
electron  -  atoms  of  adamant.  It  reminds  me  of  one 
of  my  own  early  blunders,  when  I  used  to  wonder  how 
Nature  of  itself — and  without  miracle — could  regather  the 
heat-power  given  off  by  radiation  as  the  planets  of  solar 
systems  solidified ; — of  course  this  heat-force  which  is 
motion-force  inheres  in  Nature  and  is  regathered  ; — but 
how,  indeed,  remains  a  question. 

The  physical  Universe  is  not  more  unlimited  as  ex- 
tended in  space  than  a  pebble  ;  nor  is  it  in  itself  any 
more  mysterious.  If  we  possessed  the  means  of  locomotion 
and  the  powers  of  endurance  with  the  skill  which  might 
be  required,  we  could  travel  to  the  utmost  limits  of  the 
physical  Universe  with  no  expenditure  of  supernatural 
effort.  Space  itself  is,  as  said,  mere  'empty  nothing' 
in  which  objects  extend  themselves.  Mentally  indeed,  as 
Kant  first  emphasised,  our  thought  of  space  goes  out 
indefinitely, — we  cannot  conceive  of  a  point  in  space  at 
which  our  thought  is  arrested, — so  in  numbering.  In 
this  sense  of  it,  as  our  mental  concept,  space  is  indeed 
'infinite'  in  its  range, — but  this  is  'dialectics'  and  has 
little  meaning  here. 

The  material  All-world,  however,  while  neat-cut  as 
a  prism  as  regards  'space,'  must  yet  be,  as  a  whole, 
entirely  unmeasured  and  immeasurable  as  regards  '  time  ' ; 
for  its  teeming  life  in  its  everlasting  change-motion  is 
of  course  all  that  actually  makes  up  '  time '  itself.  Causal 
thought  demands  seemingly  fresh  origination  at  every 
instant  for  each  such  myriad-phase  of  passing  matter-form, 
but  common  sieht  soon  shows  us  that  the  substance  itself 
of  the  particles,  of  which  the  almost  immeasurably  minute 
and    multitudinous    appearances    are    the    fleeting    shapes. 


God  as  Almighty,  Superpersonal,  defined  from  Nature.     183 

cannot   itself  be   destroyed  ;— the  atomic  electron-particles 
simply  change  position  ; — see  above  and  below.      Not  fire, 
flood,  nor  earthquake  diminish  their  weight  by  one  fraction 
of  a  grain; — do  ashes,    smoke,  and    gas  weigh  less  than 
the     not-yet-ignited     wood,     coal,     or    spirit  ?  —  see     the 
oxygen    and    hydrogen    separated    by    electricity    in    our 
experimenting    machines, — they    combine   again    to    equal 
weio-ht.      Let  me   never    be  misunderstood  : — I    block    no 
causes    nor    beginnings ; — beginnings    there    are,    as    said 
and  said  again,  by  the  myriad  at  every  instant.      'All   is 
flow  '  with  Hegel's  originals,  as  with  himself; — and  precious 
are  all    things   just    in   proportion   as   that   flow   is   strong 

and  rapid. 

Life  is  all  the  firmer  for   it,— for  it  is  the  flow  alone 
that   makes    it ;— see    the    pulse,   or    rather    feel    it. — Yes, 
there    are    changes    as    beginnings    rushing    on    at    every 
infinitesimal    fraction    of    a    second— but    the    everlasting 
elemental  substance    in  which  the  change  takes  place   is 
itself  unalterable.     (How  can  a  change  take  place  without 
something  which  changes,  but  which  only  changes  in  its 
outward    form?     If    there    were    no    solid    basis,    motion 
could  not  exist,  nor  be  maintained  ;   a  thing  cannot  move 
before    it    exists.)     The    physically    everlasting    elemental 
substratum  of  all  nature  is— inadequately— like  the  deep 
sea, — '  motionless' ; — the  form-change  which  is  its  manifesta- 
tion is  the  splendid  surge.     The  water  particles  rest  still, 
or  move  but  vertically  ; — it  is  the  wave-form  that   rushes 
on   over  sea    or   wheat-field.      So    also  the   thought-forms 
themselves,  the  life-sparks  of  sentient  nature  ;— they  cannot 
stop.      Mind-organism  on  organism  reaches  mature  status 
.and  cerebral  action  at  once  inevitably  sets  in  ; — it  is   the 
mere  motion  of  thought-faculties,  thought-particles*  ;— the 
thought-muscles  alone   rest   in   sleep,   if  then.     The  brain 
cerebrates,  whether  normally  or  not,  at  advancing  stages. 
Take  our  common  human  puberty  as  a  sample. — a  seed- 
thought  time  it  was  for  most  of  us  ;— see  it  at  the  soul's 
awakine, — '  conversion  '  we  used  to  call  it,— blessed  crisis  : 


1 84  Appendix. 

— we  then  broke  forth  to  reason's  consciousness, — we 
were  veritably  '  born  again.'  '  Right '  was  our  deity  ; — the 
strident  will  seemed  fiercely  free,  to  have  it  out  with  all  our 
highest  yearnings, — this,  passionately.  Negation  seemed 
cowardice  to  us  ;  to  do  some  noble  thing,  or  many,  was 
our  point ; — we  took  our  lives  lightly  in  our  hands  ; — we 
gripped  to  do  or  die ; — we  would  even  violently  force 
idlers  to  take  part.  But  what  were  we  here  again  but 
the  fine  poise  of  Nature's  sentient  forces,  her  better  ones  ? 
Injustice  seemed  the  kernel  of  all  woe  (all  hell)  to  us,  its 
centre, — focus  ; — but  behold,  truth  was  everywhere,  half- 
consciously  consoling  us. 

If  the  bird  be  fragile,  she  can  yet  rise  on  wing  and  be 
in  a  moment  safe  ; — if  the  farm  labourer  bends  to  toil,  he 
still  smells  the  sweet  earth  and  breathes  the  life-giving 
air  ; — if  the  tigress  is  long  starving,  she  yet  enjoys  her 
fierce  spring  the  more,  and  a  fuller  meal ; — if  the  inventor 
wrestles  with  hell's  stabbinofs  in  the  friohtful  fights  of 
jealousy,  he  has  yet  at  times  the  thrill  of  victory  ; — if  Dives 
is  his  life-long  assailed  by  a  million  demons  tugging  for 
his  coin,  he  has  still  at  moments  the  glut  of  his  desires. 
There  is  (imperfect)  balance  everywhere, — the  essence 
of  what  we  so  fondly  try  to  call  'fair  truth.'  Equity 
means  evenness  (see  gravitation,  which  is  analogous  to 
stability,  compactness) ; — it  is,  however,  never  perfect,  but 
attempted  everywhere — sometimes  in  terrific  forms.  Two 
monsters  meet  in  duel — one  horn  snaps  like  a  pipe-stem 
— each  battles,  so  he  thinks,  and  thinks  rightly,  for  some 
vital  interest ; — two  stags  struggle  on  a  precipice — antlers 
are  interlocked — the  does  look  on.  The  youth  knows 
that  he  feels  conscience  as  much  as  this — nay  more. 
And  so  of  that  active  right-form,  the  affections,  with  their 
obedience ; — he,  our  youth,  longs  on  principle,  as  on 
passion,  to  follow  them, — and  the  very  doves  do  too, 
dying  if  parted,  of  their  sorrow.  See  the  wild-fowl's 
motherhood ; — she  will  draw  the  gunner  off,  feigning 
herself  wounded,   drooping  her  bedraggled  wings,  on  ever 


God  as  Almighty,  Sitperpersoiial,  defined  from  NatM7X.     185 

farther  from  her  nest,  saving  her  half-hatched  brood  ; — 
look  at  the  common  poultry  of  the  barn-door — they  even 
attracted  the  attention  of  our  Lord ;- — see  too  a  keen 
bitch  with  her  litter ;  she  shows  her  sharp  teeth  at  once  ; — 
devotion  is  a  part  of  nature  ; — '  attraction  everywhere  as 
the  square  of  the  distance  ' ;  see  above. 

And  what  is  the  controlling  order  within  and  through- 
out it  all  but  a  something  akin  to  chemical  concentration 
and  distribution  ? — like  crystallisation  ;  see  above  ; — the 
chief  bull  leads  the  herd ; — look  at  the  ants  again  ; — order 
is  everywhere  (attempted),  and  so  is  genius.  The  very 
mould  of  the  world  seems  to  outfold  itself  of  itself; — 
see  the  chrysalis ;  the  butterfly's  cast  is  there  ; — look  at 
the  physical  perfection  of  a  new-born  human  being  ; — every 
little  nail  is  in  its  place  ; — in  fact,  all  sentient  and  all  non- 
sentient  being  is  there  in  motion  toward  an  ideal,  infernal 
or  sublime.  Even  in  the  fused  condition  this  was  so  ; — 
change-phenomenon  lived  on  in  the  electron  in  spite  of 
flames ; — forms  predestined  and  pre-existing  appeared 
everywhere,  as  globe  on  globe  grew  cool ; — all  the  poles 
at  first  chilled  slowly ; — then  half-way  down  they  grew 
more  temperate,  till  at  last  the  equators  became  possible, 
just  as  the  globes  themselves  contracted  from  their  still 
prior  fire-mists, — and  everywhere,  as  of  dire  necessity, 
as  the  heat  went  off,  '  life  swarmed,'  and  with  it  con- 
sciousness, Satanic  or  benign.  So  our  own  self-life ; — 
all  was  struororlinor  riorht,  love,  order,  and  motion,  with 
intermittent  defeat  or  victory  through  murder,  sneak, 
etc.  ; — but  where  did  it  all  come  from  ? — this  all-creative 
force — for  none  of  us  who  have  left  our  cradles  interpose 
a  prseternatural  creative  interference  at  the  very  last,  or  first 
strange  occurrence  which  we  notice  going  back.  We,  all  of 
us,  insert  that  miracle  at  a  long  distance,  indefinitely  farther 
off — all  is  as  yet  the  eternal  '  sequence '  with  us,  in  the 
common  causal-chain  ; — it  is  ever-changing  shape-form  from 
the  place-changings  of  the  electron-atoms  of  the  ever- 
astinCT  unchanorinsf  substance — substratum. 


1 86  Appendix. 

[(To  focus  our  thoughts  upon  the  one  question  which  is 
here  paramount  and  closely  exacts  our  utmost  attention, 
let  me  return  for  a  moment  to  what  I  have  just  said  ;  'life 
swarmed,'  I  have  asserted,  including  perhaps  too  lightly  the 
most  crucial  of  all  physical  inquiries  within  the  other  forma- 
tive processes  and  their  discussion.  What,  then,  as  regards 
the  origin  of  life  itself  have  we  further  here  to  say ; — and 
what  as  regards  its  re-origins  reiterated  in  a  past  eternity  ? 
—  Has  it,  life's  origin,  indeed  been  no  exceptional  occur- 
rence with  all  the  others,  or  have  we  here  the  re-orio-inatino- 
creation-miracle  in  its  most  central  effect  before  us  ?  Well 
might  the  unequalled  question  again  possess  us,  breaking 
in  upon  every  other  consideration. 

I  hold  indeed — so  I  repeat — to  Miracle  everywhere  as 
a  supreme  factor  here  throughout  in  this  religious  scheme 
of  system  which  I  am  just  building  up  ; — see  everywhere 
above; — but  immense  as  are  the  issues,  and  enormously 
difficult  as  is  the  problem,  I  do  not  think  that  we  need  to 
introduce  the  Miracle  just  at  this  point.  Caloric  itself, 
the  all-energising,  vivified  and  vivifying  life-motion-force 
throughout  us  does  not— and  did  noi—as  I  believe— 
destroy  those  forces  in  the  elements  which  ever  evolve  the 
vital  principle. 

All  existing  things  once  flamed,  as  said  before  ; — so 
once  at  least,  upon  this  sidereal  ball,  with  its  planet-mates, 
and  probably  not  once  alone, — at  indefinitely  repeated 
intervals  throughout  a  past  eternity  ;— all  surely  passed 
through  fire.  Every  principle  discovered  and  discoverable 
was  there,  with  every  element,  within  that  blazing  mass  of 
burnt  nature.  Out  of  these  seething  substances,  once 
vapour,  then  fluid,  then  fiery  sands  and  stones  and  metals, 
came  all  things  here  terrestrial,— as  few  now  doubt, — for 
all  were  already  there  in  germ  without  exception.  The 
evolving  and  revolving  masses  grew  slowly  dense  ; — vapour 
thickened  to  liquid,  liquid  to  solid,  till  the  well-formed 
continents  appeared  between  the  oceans,  with  hot  rivers 
rushing    in    their   own    midst   as    well ; — and    out    of   this 


God  as  Almighty,  Stiperpersonal,  defined  from  Nature.     1 87 

all  came  the  great  souls  of  earth  as  well    as  the  villains, 
counterfeits,  and  knaves,— and  with  them  the  now  for  ever 
forgotten    millions  upon  millions  of  other  sentient  beings 
who  have  emerged  from  the  same  elements,  come  also  to 
their  apex,  some  of  them,  and  perished,  having  vibrated  to 
some  partial  measure  at  least,  all  of  them,  with  the  same 
yearnings,  emotions,  fears,  and  hopes  in  the  long  aeons  of 
a  past  formative  eternity ; — and  this  in  endless  iterations, 
catenations.      No,   verily!  we  raise  no  voice  to  deny  that 
thing  'beginning'— far  from    it;    God  forbid ;— see  every- 
where before.     Beginnings   rushed    on,  are   rushing    now, 
and  will  for  ever  fly  at  more   than  electric  speed; — it    is 
only  the  aflixed  particle  to  the  great  word  with  which  we 
quarrel.    '  Beginnings '  there  are,  as  we  cannot  too  frequently 
accede,  and  by  the  million, — myriads  at  every  fraction  of 
a    second, — so    ever    throughout    all, — but    they    are    but 
the   rushings-on   of  eternal  form-change,— not  one  single 
one  of  the  vast  finitude  was  ever  for  a  moment  absohite  as 
an  2dtimate,  or  primal,  original  in  any  sense  at  all, — not 
for  an  instant.     Like  the  chants  to  God  in  the  Gathic  faith, 
they  •  had  no  first ' ;— all  was  fleeting  '  form-change  '  of  an 
abiding  substratum,  eternal  in  its  sequence,  forth  and  back  ; 

for  so  He  willed.     So  only,  or  rather,  so  really, — for  there 

is  nothing  greater  than  a  form-change, — we  must  not  snub 
it, — substance's  eternally  proceeding  external  it  is— mighty 
indeed,— advancing  ever,— so  they  are,  these  form-changes 
with  crashing  cataclysms  in  smiles  of  beauty  or  frowns  of 
horror.      Differences  there  are  in  them,  somewhat  great ; — 
slime  and  a  solar  system  are  not  so  close  alike  ; — nor  are  a 
fetish  and  a  Phidias.     The  ever-furious  fresh  form-changes 
glide,   or  crash  on  with  standing  speed  {sic),  and  in  that 
motion  under  Him  all  sentient  life-forces  have  their  being,— 
but  from  the  first  ever  imagined  slightest  jar, — not  to  say 
'recorded,' — to   those  awful   motions  now  passing  at  this 
present  instant,  not  one  single  one  of  them,  not  even  Life 
I TSELF,  has  been  without  its  causing  conditions,  save  for  H  im.  )] 


A  SUMMARY  WITH  AN  APPLICATION. 

Such,  then,  was  and  is  my  attempt  to  redeem  our  holy- 
faith  from  nature-worship, — if  still  from  one  half-uncon- 
scious and  most  seductive, — while  I  would  ever  at  the 
same  time  exalt  our  supreme  adoration  of  the  All-merciful, 
Almighty,  Illimitable  God,  superpersonal  and  omni- 
present. And  in  doing  this  I  have  endeavoured  to  point 
out, — not  what  He  is — forbid  ! — but  what  our  ideas  of 
Him  are  ; — and  I  have  done  this  by  showing  what  our 
ideas  of  Him  are  not ; — for  to  endeavour  to  show  what  He 
is  aside  from  this  negative  method  would  be  profane.*  I 
have  shown  that  we  may  declare  Him  to  be  superpersonal 
beyond  all  limits, — not  a  phase  of  nature  merely,  nor  an 
object  in  nature  personal  like  ourselves  and  limited, 
perhaps  mighty,  but  not  almighty.  And  in  the  course  of 
doing  this  I  have  tried  to  build  up  both  arguments  and 
their  illustrations  out  of  the  deductions  and  discoveries 
of  that  very  science  which  sometimes  would  resist  our 
worship  ; — for  I  wish  to  accept  with  gratitude  and  still 
more  diligrent  examination  all  that  active  sanitv  has  shown 
to  be  most  probable  as  the  truth — and  what  is  discussion 
without  truth  .^ — above  all,  what  is  religion  (!)  without 
it  ?  First  of  all  I  have  endeavoured  to  make  plain  that 
our  Universe,  moral,  material,  intellectual,  is — always 
under  His  will — complete  as  in  itself  for  good  or  ill, — the 
best,  the  worst,  the  only  possible.! 

*  Who  by  searching  can  find  Him  out?  'Verily  Thou  art  a  God  that 
hidest  Thyself,  O  God  of  Israel  !'     Even  'nature  loves  to  conceal  itself.' 

t  How  exceedingly  ill-judged  it  was  of  Schopenhauer  to  emphasise 
so  constantly  '  the  worst  world,'  as  of  Leibnitz  to  talk  so  much  about  the 
'  best ' ;  it  is  of  course  the  '  only  possible  '  world  ; — otherwise  we  have 
'  chaotic  intoxication.' 

i88 


A  Summary  with  an  Application.  189 

This    I    believe  to  be   the   first  of  intellectual   truths; 
and   I    think   it   to  be   one  of  the  most  sacred  of  all  our 
duties  to  hold  it   firm,   saving  it  from  profanation.     Our 
Universe  could  not  exist  for  one  instant,  save  as  He  has 
willed  it  and  as  He  wills  it,*— all  its  wonder,  all  its  power, 
all    its   beauty,   all   its  terror  rests   and    moves    and    lives 
incomprehensibly  only  in  Him  ;— but  I   urgently  maintain 
that    even  while   it  may   so   exist  under    Him   it    is   as  a 
mechanism  self-moved  and  self-sufficient.     Even  if  it  once 
beo-an  in  time,  it  so  beoran   under  Him  and  at  His  will; 
and  if  it  never  needed  to  begin,  it  was  as  existing  under 
His  permissive  will.      I    have  also  asserted    my   right    to 
believe   that   it   may  in  fact  be  true  that  it  did  so  never 
need    to    begin— under     Him,— and    that    it    is    also    so 
constituted   under   Him    that  it  will  never    of   itself   end. 
Surely  there  is  a  higher  adoration  f    lurking  here    rather 
than   a  suspicion    of    impiety.     Though   a   thing  be    self- 
contained,   if   it    be    still  within   and   under  His   almighty 
power,     it    is     then    as     evermore     His     property    none 
the   less,    and    His   glory    is    to    us    obviously    the    more 
exalted  when  we  recognise  this   strange  completeness   in 
His  possession,  while  with  one  touch  He  could  annihilate 
the  whole  of  it,  if  so  He  would— with  another  re-originate  it ; 
—so  that  while  it  is  indeed  a  contradiction  in  reasonable 
terms  to  say  that  He  created  a  Universe  which  was  never 
begun — it    is    actually    no    contradiction — see    above — to 
say    that   He    created   that  which   would  aside   from    His 
creative  word  need  no  creation,  nor  yet  is  it  a  contradiction 
to  say  that  He  may  have  actually  from   all  eternity  per- 
mitted and  upheld  the  existence  of  a  mechanism  the  forces 
of   which    are    balanced    and    contained  within   itself,   and 
which  has  of  itself  never  begun,  and  which  of  itself  shall 
never  end+.     Confusion  of  thought  here  baffles  us,  as  of 
course,— but  why  should  it  so  arise?    Could  not  Omnipotence 

*  See  above,  upon  the  'Underlying  Principles,'  page  169 ff. 

t  See  above  and  below. 

+  Recapitulated  from  the  '  Underlying  Principles.' 


1 90  Appendix. 

create  or  permit  the  existence  of  an  object  which  would 
otherwise  have  been  in  itself  unbecrun  as  well  as  unending, 
if  so  He  willed, — and  is  not  the  contrary  irrational  ?  For 
surely  no  unbegun  and  unending  existence  has  of  itself 
any  stipj-evie  divinity, — it  is  'under  Him  ' ;  and  even  aside 
from  Him  it  has  not  even  then  any  independent  power, 
unless  it  be  the  Universe  itself — for  all  the  force  in  every 
separated  object  is  but  one  pulsation  of  the  universal 
moving  energy.  Peinnane^ice  is  not  in  itself  a  thing 
adorable  ; — time  itself  is  something  existing  only  in  our 
minds  (so  again  with  Kant) ; — it  is  our  own  observa- 
tion and  our  own  measure  of  the  course  of  nature ; — ■ 
there  is  no  'time'  with  Him,  as  one  day  even  with  our- 
selves 'time  shall  be  no  more.'  Past  and  future  are  with 
Him  but  one  absolute  present,  a  present  not  like  ours 
an  ever-fleeting  point.  If  He  from  His  eternity  wills 
the  existence  of  a  self-contained,  self-moving  object,  where 
is  the  impossibility  and  where  the  mystery — for  active 
sanity  has  long  since  shown  that  every  pebble  in  its 
elements  exists — under  Him — as  of  itself?  What  business 
have  we  to  talk  of  '  confusion  '  here  }  We  are  dealing  with 
matters  in  themselves  utterly  beyond  all  conclusive  inference. 
Standing  in  awful  adoration  as  we  do,  upon  the  very  field 
of  faith  before  the  all-presence  of  our  Almighty  Illimitable 
God — no  mere  Olympic  person — what  right  have  we 
to  fumble  here  v/ith  mysteries'^ — all  is  mystery  as  of  course. 
And  what,  after  all,  is  there  so  wonderful  in  this — under 
Him — \}d\^  unbegun  existence? — surely  what  exists  in  this 
flying  moment  is  as  wonderful  as  the  unbegun,  if  not 
more  so  ? — and  here  we  cannot  well  be  too  particular. 

What  could  be  so  wonderful  as  that  miracle,  the 
supposed  arrest  or  diversion  of  the  ever-moving  form- 
change,*  even  for  one  moment — not  to  speak  of  the 
elemental  substance  ; — the  Permanence  is  not  the  exception, 
the  wonder ; — Permanence  in  the  regulated  form-change, 
in    the    phenomenon    of  the    substance,    is    the    rule ; — it. 

*  See  the  'Underlying  Principles.' 


A   Summary  with  an  Application.  191 

the  Permanence,  is  in  reality  the  reverse  of  wonderful  ;— 
it  is  merely  the  punctual  and  fully  expected  reappearance 
on  every  day  of  an  object  in  form-change  which  always 
occurs  in  the  causal  chain,  and  could  not  but  recur.      Is 
not    the    fact    that    a    pebble    exists    to-day    really    more 
wonderful     than     that     the     pebble's     elements     existed 
yesterday?       Of     course     it     is ;— I     say     'the     pebble's 
elements,' — for    the     pebble's     form    has    changed    since 
yesterday,    if  but  infinitesimally  through   waste.     That   it 
exists  in   this  present  vanishing  moment  proves  that  the 
forces  which  were  in  it  yesterday  still  hold  otU,  a  matter 
not  at  all  so  lightly   to   be  taken  as  self-evident — not  at 
least  in  the  light  of  higher  science.     We  could  vow  from 
habit  that  a  pebble  which  we  see   to-day— barring  slight 
waste — existed    yesterday ; — but    we    could    only    do    so 
because  it  seems  to  be  before  us  now  this  instant  in  the 
causal  chain.     The  fact  that  it  existed    yesterday   is   the 
needed  basis    of  its   to-day's  existence  ; — that   yesterday's 
existence    is    the    farthest    removed    of  all   things  from   a 
mystery,  and  so  of  before-yesterday  and  before-yesterdays 
before  that  by  the  million — back  to  the  very  infinite.     The 
fact    of  these   fore-yesterdays,    with   the   ever  same   form- 
changes  in  the  ultimate  particles  of  the  elemental  substance, 
is   the   most  commonplace  of  all  commonplaces,  never  the 

exception. 

The  continuous  process  of  the  form-changing,  even 
if  it  continues  unbroken  back  to  a  past  eternity,  is  not 
the  miracle  which,  when  recognised,  should  startle  us,— 
it  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  slightest  break  in  that  causality 
which  would  seem  to  us  the  maniac's  idea  ; — that  is,  save 
for  Him  ;— it  is  this  which  should  be  the  astounding  thing, 
— the  sub-eternity  of  timelessness  in  this  substance  is  the 
natural  state  of  all  physical  existence  ; — and  we  should 
school  ourselves  ceaselessly  to  get  used  to  it. 

For  if  these  elements  which  now  exist  before  our  eyes 
in  their  ever  swiftly  passing  form-change  have  existed 
in  a  causal  chain  throughout  a  past  eternity  as  a  necessity 


192  Appendix. 

to  their  existence  this  instant,  aside  from  fantastic  error, 
how  could  they  have  ever  got  out  of  existence  at  any 
conceivable  past  period  of  time  ? ; — and  if  they  had  ever 
existed  before  a  supposed  annihilating  break,  where  could 
they  have  gone  to  ? — and  how  was  the  space  filled  up 
which  they  once  occupied  ? — and  if  they  had  never 
existed  before,  where  did  they  then  come  from  ? — aside 
from  His  creative  fiat.  Our  imaginations  are  diseased 
upon  this  subject — diverted,  perverted,  subverted.  The 
Unbegttn — aside  from  Him — should  be  to  us  the  simplest 
of  all  simple  things,  the  most  familiar  of  all  familiar, 
the  one  idea  non-ideotic.  So — of  course — as  we  slowly 
recover  from  our  fond  fatuities,  infantile  as  they  were,* — 
so  while  taking  fully  in  what  this  simplest  of  all 
simple  things  must  mean, — what  else, — let  me  repeat 
once  more,  to  drive  this  most  critical  of  all  sueeestions 
home — what  else  can  such  a  recognition  do  but  exalt  the 
more,  and  ever  yet  the  more,  our  adoration  of  Him  who 
created  such  a  self-moved  mechanism  or — what  is  the 
same — permitted  it  ?  Nothing  can  increase  His  glory 
which  is  illimitable — but  surely  this  can  and  must  increase 
our  measure  of  it — as  I  repeat. f  If  a  self-moved  Universe, 
unbeginning  in  itself,  unbegun  in  itself,  unending,  save 
for  Him,  is  the  grandest  of  all  conceivable  objects,  filling 
up — to  over-repletion — our  receptive  image-making  power, 
surely  this  exalts  our  adoration  of  Him  who  is  its  Owner — 
its  Permitting  Lord — its  illimitable,  all-powerful  Creator ; 
and  this  was  meant  to  be  the  proposition  with  which  I 
first  set  out. 

Why  then — it  may  be  asked — do  you  say  '  Our  Father  ' 
in  your  prayer,'*  All  the  more,  I  answer, — I  do  so  all 
the  more  from  these  my  principles,  for  '  I  walk  by  faith,' 
speaking  with  illimitable  freedom  when  I  speak  in  worship 
of  Him  who  'dwelleth  in  light  which  no  man  can  approach 
unto' — and  of  what  He  represents.      Do  you  understand, 

*  Recovering  from  our  congenital  imperfection, 
t  See  above. 


A  Sum^nary  with  a7i  Application.  193 

then — so  one  may  inquire  further — what  you  say  of  the 
inimitable?  How  futile  is  the  question  ; — see  everywhere 
above.  I  build  up  negations  indeed  with  intellection, 
that  is  to  say,  with  '  understanding ' ;  but  as  to  Him — I 
throw  my  soul  in  adoring  worship  before  His  footstool — 
'  Our  Father,  who  art  in  heaven,  hallowed  be  Thy 
name.'  But  are  not  those  words  '  speech-figure '  ? — so 
some  might  interpose  once  more. — All  language  of  the  kind 
is  but  speech-figure — to  help  express  things  not  otherwise 
expressible? — I  take  with  others  the  sweetest  word  in 
all  the  universe  of  sound,  and  I  apply  it  to  the  Great 
Spirit  illimitable  who  is  over  all,  within  all,  throughout 
us  all, — He  who  in  the  beginning  by  awful  creative  miracle 
made,  or  still  more  wonderfully  permitted  and  upheld, 
the  heavens  and  the  earth : — and  with  that  same  creative 
and  permissive  miracle  may  He  save  us  as  we  need  ! 


Priniea  hy 
Morrison  &  Gibb  Limited 

Edinburgh 


WORKS    by   PROFESSOR    MILLS 

LATEST— 1913 

A    DICTIONARY    OF    THE    GATHIC     LANGUAGE    OF    THE 

ZEND    AVESTA, 

being  pp.  623-1138  +  xxxof  the  FIVE  ZARATHUSH- 
TRIAN  GAT  HAS,  completing  that  work.  Vols.  i.  and 
ii.  were  subventioned  by  his  Lordship  the  Secretary  of 
State  for  India  in  Council,  and  by  the  Trustees  of  the  Sir 
J.  Jejeebhoy  Translation  Fund  of  Bombay. 

This  work,  together  with  vol.  xxxi.  of  the  Sacred  Books 
of  the  East,  and  with  the  editions  of  the  Pahlavi  Yasna 
IT,  IX-XXVI,  LIV-LXXI,  published  in  Z.D.M.G.,  trans- 
lated in  J.R.A.S.  (several  dates),  exploits  the  MSS.  of  the 
Yasna  now  in  the  Bodleian  Library,  especially  the  leading 
one,  which  is  also  reproduced,  770  photographs,  with  an 
introductory  note  by  L.  H.  Mills  (Ten  Guineas). 

The  author  here  endeavours  to  reproduce  all  the  more 
serious  opinions  of  other  writers,  ancient  and  modern,  and 
especially  those  in  the  Asiatic  Commentaries,  Pahlavi, 
Persian,  and  Sanskrit,  which  are  deciphered,  edited,  and 
translated,  and  commented  upon  in  the  first  two  volumes. 
He  is  happy  to  say  that  his  views  coincide  with  those  latest 
issued  as  closely  as  could  be  expected  in  the  case  of  writers 
pursuing  mutually  independent  studies,  more  closely  than 
those  of  any  two  mutually  independent  writers  upon  the 
Rig  Veda,  while  he  reports  the  views  of  others  largely  as 
alternatives.  His  sole  point  of  criticism  concerns  the 
incomplete  mastery  of  the  materials  on  the  part  of  esteemed 
writers  who  follow  opinions  made  without  the  exhaustive 
study  of  the  Pahlavi,  Persian,  and  Sanskrit  commentaries, 
which  circumstance  alone  mars  the  otherwise  great  value  of 
their  suggestions. 

The  Avesta  text  in  this  Dictionary  is  in  the  original 
character,  and  contains  the  entire  text  of  the  Gathas,  also 
a  complete  Grammar  of  all  the  forms  in  the  Gathas,  includ- 
ing lengthy  excursuses  upon  both  the  danger  and  the  value 
of  the  Pahlavi,  Persian,  and  Sanskrit  translations.  Price 
£1  ;  pp.  200-516  (?)  sold  separately  to  those  who  have 
purchased  pp.  1-199.      io.t. 


YASNA  I  in  its  Sanskrit  equivalents  separately 
printed,  191  2,  pp.  22.      2s. 

YASNA  XXVIII  in  its  Sanskrit  equivalents  (Roth's 
Festgruss,  1893). 


YASNA  XXIX  in  its  Sanskrit  and  English  equiva- 
lents, pp.  25,  just  issued.      Louvain  {Jihiseon),  19  12. 

YASNA  XLIV  in  its  Sanskrit  forms,  1897,  re- 
issued in  the  Z.D.M.G.,  191 1-12.  (The  rest  of  the  Gathas 
are  in  manuscript  in  similar  form,  and  will  be  issued  as  time 
permits.) 

Just  issued.  OUR  OWN  RELIGION  IN 
ANCIENT  PERSIA,  being  a  collection  of  Lectures 
delivered  in  Oxford,  collating  the  pre-Christian  Exilic 
Pharisaism  with  the  dogiiiatik  of  the  Avesta,  so  advancing 
the  Persian  Question  to  the  foremost  position  in  ouV 
Biblical  Criticism,  pp.   193  -f  xii,  19 13.      6^. 


THE    YASNA    OF    THE    AVESTA 

in  continuous  treatment,  upon  the  plan  initiated  in  the 
FIVE  ZARATHUSHTRIAN  GATHAS,  by  L.  H. 
Mills,  Professor  of  Zend  (Avesta)  Philology  in  the 
University  of  Oxford.  A  STUDY  OF  YASNA  I, 
with  the  Avesta,  Pahlavi,  Sanskrit,  and  Persian  Texts. 
The  Pahlavi  is  given  in  the  original  character  and  in  trans- 
literation, the  Pahlavi  and  Sanskrit  being  translated  into 
English  here,  the  Avesta  in  S.B.E.,  xxxi.,  1887,  wdth 
Sanskrit  Equivalents  here,  1910;  the  Persian  is  itself  an 
interlinear  translation  of  the  Pahlavi.  The  Avesta  Text  is 
reconstructional  with  copious  notes.  The  Pahlavi  is  re- 
edited  from  the  Journal  of  the  German  Oriental  Society, 
with  all  the  MSS.  collated,  Bd.  Ivii.  Heft  iv.,  1903;  the 
English  translation  is  re-edited  from  the  Journal  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society  for  October  1904;  Neryosangh's 
Sanskrit  is  re-edited  from  Spiegel,  with  the  additional 
collation  of  five  MSS.,  and  for  the  first  time  translated. 
The  Persian  is  from  the  Munich  MS.  already  partly 
edited  in  the  Gathas.  An  Appendix  contains  the  accented 
Sanskrit  Equivalents  of  the  Avesta  Text  by  the  Author, 
issued  upon  the  plan  adopted  by  him  with  Yasna  XXVUI 
in  Roth's  Festgruss,  1893  (see  Oldenburg's  remarks  7'^  the 
Vedic  poetry,  in  Vedic  Religion,  p.  27),  and  wath  Yasna 
XLIV  in  the  Acts  of  the  Eleventh  Congress  of  Orientalists 
held  in  Paris,  1897,  2nd  ed.,  Z.D.M.G.,  1911-12.  Four 
photographic  plates  of  MSS.,  with  other  illustrative  matter, 
are  added,  pp.  163,  to  be  had  of  F.  A.  Brockiiaus,  in 
Leipzig,  ys.  6d.  Yasna  I  is  especially  valuable,  as  it  deals 
with  the  chief  important  questions  of  all  the  non-Gathic 
Yasna. 

YASNA    XXVIII    re-translated  into  English    in  the 
Asiatic  Qtiarterly  Review,  1 9 1 1 . 


YASNA  XXIX,  commented  upon  re-translated  into 
English  and  Sanskrit,  Mtiseon,  19 12.      (See  above.) 

YASNA  XXX  re-translated  into  English  in /.7?.y^.5., 
1912. 

YASNA  XLIV,  i-io,  re-translated  in  Asiatic 
Quarterly  Reviezv,  1 9 1 1 . 

YASNA  XLIV,  commented  upon,  with  Sanskrit  trans- 
lation by  the  author  in  Z.D.M.G.,  191 2.    (See  above.) 

A  few  copies  of  ZARATHUSHTRA,  PHILO, 
THE  ACH^MENIDS  AND  ISRAEL,  pp.  4604- 
XXX  (1905-06)  are  still  to  be  had  of  Kegan  Paul,  Trench, 
Triibner,  &  Co.,  and  of  the  leading  booksellers  in  Oxford, 
at  i2s.  6d.  "He  treats  his  subject  thoroughly  and  ex- 
haustively .  .  .  deep  and  patient  studies."  J.  J.  Modi, 
Head  Priest  of  the  Parsis,  Colaba,  Bombay,  in  the  Parsi 
of  Bombay,  1906. — "A  wealth  of  learning  and  thought." 
Nation,  N.Y.,  August  30,  1906  (Dr.  Gray). — This  work, 
almost  in  its  entirety,  first  appeared  in  articles  in  the 
Asiatic  Quarterly  Review. 

AVESTA  ESCHATOLOGY  COMPARED 
WITH  DANIEL  AND  REVELATIONS,  by  L. 
H.  Mills  (1908),  to  be  had  of  Kegan  Paul,  Trench, 
Trubner,  &  Co.  SAGGI  DI  LETTURE,  TENUTE 
ALL'  UNIVERSITA  DI  OXFORD,  SULLA 
RELIGIONE  DELL'  AVESTA,  dal  Prof.  Lorenzo 
Mills,  being  sections  of  lectures,  delivered  in  the 
University  of  Oxford,  with  ZOROASTER  AND  THE 
BIBLE,  by  L.  H.  Mills  {Nineteenth  Centtuy  Revieiv, 
1894,  fii*st  translated  into  Gujarati  by  N.  D,  Coorlawala, 
of  Bombay,  1896),  now  translated  into  Italian  by  an 
accomplished  Italian  man  of  letters  upon  his  own  initiative, 
1 9 10.      G.  Sacerdote,  Turin,  Italy.      Pp.  75.      Price  2s. 

The  Ahuna  Vairya  formula,  [.R.A.S.,  19 10. 

THE  GATHAS  in  ENGLISH  VERBATIM 
AND  FREE  METRICAL,  with  Headings  from 
S.B.E.,  xxxi.  (Leipzig,  1900;  75.),  has  been  re-issued, 
bound  with  the  Sanskrit  Equivalents  of  Yasna  I,  the  Pahl. 
in  oriental  and  transliterated  characters,  the  Persian, 
Sartskrit,  and  the  Italian,  or  with  the  Dictionary.  As  bound 
up  with  the  DICTIONARY,  this  English  edition  of  1900 
gives  both  the  complete  Gatha  text,  with  Grammar  and 
Dictionary,  and  also  a  verbatim  and  free  metrical 
version.  The  antiquations  of  the  English  edition  of 
1900  are  corrected  in  the  Dictionary,  and  to  some  extent 
in   Ottr  Own  Religion    in   Ancient   Persia ;    see   also    the 


new  Edilions  of  Y.  XXVIII,  Asiatic  Quart.  Rev.,  191 1  ; 
Y.  XXIX  in  the  Musdon,  1912  ;  Y.  XXX  m  J.R.A.S., 
191  I  :  Y.  XLIV,  i-ic,  in  the  Asiatic  Quart.  Rev.,  191 1, 
and  in  Z.D.M.G.,  1912. 

The  thirty-first  volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
the  YASNA,  VISPARAD.  AFRINAGAN,  AND 
GAH,  pp.  400  +  xlvii,  1887  (same  Author),  is  still  to  be 
had  at  125.  6^/.  ("the  best  Translations  are  those  by 
Darmesteter  and  Mills":  thus  Dr.  Geldner,  Ency.  Brit., 
vol.  xxiv.  p.  778);  as  is  the  ANCIENT  MANU- 
SCRIPT OF  THE  YASNA,  collotyped  in  an  un- 
surpassed manner  in  the  actual  size  and  colour  of  the 
original,  770  photographs,  with  Introductory  Note  by 
L.  H.  Mills  (Ten  Guineas).  This  is  the  main  document 
of  the  above-mentioned  works,  and  for  the  presence  of  the 
orio-inal     of    it    in     the     Bodleian     Library     Mr.    Mills    is 

responsible,  1889. 

0  ^ 


"Prof.  Mills's  name  stands  foremost  in  the  ranks  of 
those  who  have  explored  the  field  of  Avestic  literature." 
The  Rast  Goftar,  Bombay,  April  18,  1909.— "  B^eyond 
question  our  leading  authority  now  living  on  the  Gathas." 
The  Nation,  N.Y.,  August  30,  1906.— [  Earlier]  (of  Mills' 
Gathas)  "  Das  Ergebniss  einer  erstaunlichen  i\rbeit  sehr 
mannigfaltiger  Art — unser  Verstiindniss  der  Gathas 
machtig  ^efordert."  Gott.  GeleJir.  Anz.,  May  13,  1893.— 
"  Insbesondere  von  Mills,  der  diese  schwierigen  Gedichte 
in  grundlichster  Weise  behandelt  hat."  Prettssisches 
Jahrbuch,  1897,  Prof.  Justi  (Lexicographer).— "  Tous 
ceux  qui  s'occupent  de  I'interpretation  des  Gathas  rendront 
hommage  a  I'immense  labeur  scientifique  de  M.  Mills  .  .  . 
son  livre  reste  un  instrument  indispensable  pour  I'etude." 
Prof.  James  Darmesteter,  Revtie  Critique,  September 
18,  1893. 

"  Alles  was  fiir  die  Erklarung  der  Gathas  nothwendig 
ist."  (So  also  Dr.  West  \x\  f.R.A.S.,  1906.)— "  Immer 
wird  es  die  Grundlage  bilden,  auf  der  sich  jede  weitere 
Forschung  aufbauen  muss  .  .  .  einen  hervorragenden 
Dienst."  Zeitschrift  der  deutschen  M.  G.,  1896,  (the  late) 
R.  PiscHEL  (first  Sanskritist  of  Germany).— A  new  edition 
has  been  inquired  for,  and  a  renewed  Government 
subvention  is  expected  from  an  antiquated  engagement. 

A  very  few  copies  of  the  Gathas  (Av.,  Pahl.,  Skt.,  Pers. 
texts,  and  Comm.,  pp.  622-f-xxx,  1892-94)  are  still  to  be 
had  for  libraries,  at  £:■,,  of  F.  A.  Brockuaus  in  Leipzig. 


BL1515.M65 

Our  own  religion  in  Ancient  Persia, 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00036  5272 


